Fine line black outline of a bird in flight tattooed on the ankle and heel area of a foot.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Outline bird in flight on an ankle

Fine line · Ankle · Black and grey · Photo

A single bird in flight is drawn in a simple black outline, with wings raised and the tail extended to the left. The linework is thin and even, with no shading or fill, and the ink sits flat on the skin. The tattoo is small and centred on a light-skinned foot, with a grey fabric edge at the top and a blurred striped fabric at the left.

Fine line Ankle Bird Dove Flight Outline

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 gulls had gone quiet over the harbour by the time the boat came in, and I wrote it down the way my father taught me: wind south-west, light failing, one bird on the rail that would not be shooed. It was a small grey dove, thin in the leg, its feathers rumpled from the crossing. Mrs Tennant from the chandlery said it had flown into the rigging off the Skerry and simply refused to leave, so they had carried it ashore in a fish basket with a folded blanket.

Keep reading

I did not want a bird in the lamp room. Birds ruin the glass and foul the stairs. But when I climbed up at dusk it was sitting on the iron rail outside the gallery, facing east, wings half lifted as if it had been asked a question and was deciding. I opened the door a crack and it did not move. So I lit the wick and sat with it, and we watched the sea go from pewter to ink.

In the morning the rail was empty. I found a single pale feather caught in the brass, and beyond the reef a thin line of dark wings going out over the water, low and steady, toward a coast none of us could see. I logged the wind, the visibility, the tide. Under remarks I wrote only: bird gone, sea clear, lamp trimmed.