Ornate owl tattoo on a forearm in black and grey with a small blue heart on its chest, in a neo-traditional style with dotwork detail.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Ornate owl with blue heart on a forearm

Dotwork · Forearm · Mixed · Photo

A large owl perches on a thin branch, with its wings folded down the sides and its eyes facing forward. The body is filled with dense ornamental linework, scrollwork and stippled dots in black and grey, with a small solid blue heart at the centre of the chest. The design sits across the skin with the image cropped at the top by a sleeve and plain dark background on the sides.

Dotwork Neo-trad Forearm Owl Heart Branch Feather Ornament Scrollwork

Find an artist for this

Take it to an artist as a reference. A good artist will make it yours rather than copy someone else's tattoo.

A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The owl arrived with the paraffin, shut in a crate meant for lamp glass, and by the time Father had trimmed the wick she had taken the iron rail beneath the lantern room as her own. She sat very upright with her eyes fixed on the sea, as though she were the one keeping the light, and she would not be moved by brooms or by the cook's sharp words.

Keep reading

Mother said the blue at her breast was the colour of the signal flags, that the ink-man had dipped his brush by mistake, and so the name stuck: Sweetheart, though Father called her the Admiral. Her feathers were drawn like the lace on a christening shawl, every curl and spiral pressed into place, and in the evenings she shook them out and looked like something a jeweller had made and then lost interest in. She took mice from the boathouse and left them on the step like rent.

The night the gale came in from the north-east, the lamp guttered at ten past two and went dark for the first time in forty years. I climbed the stairs with a candle cupped in both hands, certain the ships were out there in the murk waiting for a light that had died. The owl did not stir when I came up. She was turned to the water, her folded wings silver with rain, and beside her the great lens sat black. I struck one match and then another, and each time she shifted her head a fraction, as if counting.

By dawn the wick was alight again and three fishing boats had rounded the point. Father looked at the owl and the owl looked at the sea. I have never thought her an omen of anything, only a sentry who knew which hours were hers. Every dusk now I climb the stairs before I trim the lamp, and I say good evening to her, and she says nothing, which is how I know she has heard.