Black and grey realism tattoo of an owl and a small bird across a shoulder and upper arm, set among swirling shaded clouds.

Owl and bird on shoulder and upper arm

Realism · Shoulder · Black and grey · Photo

A large owl with detailed feather texture sits at the top of the arm, with a smaller bird below it on a swirling wave of shaded feathers. The linework is soft and the shading is smooth, with strong contrast in the eyes and feather edges. The image is in black and grey only, shown on a bare arm against a white top and a dark background.

Realism Shoulder Upper arm Owl Bird Feather Swirl Smoke

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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

Sit closer, the rain has found the gap under the awning again and it will not stop before the cathedral bells. You want the owl, then. Everyone wants the owl. Mind the fish crates, Mrs Okonedo has a temper for wet boots and a sharper tongue than her knives.

Keep reading

Years back, when the market was only canvas and paraffin lamps, a barn owl called Tamsin kept the wind off the stalls. Not the wind that comes off the river at dusk, mind, the wind that tears the tarpaulins loose and sends the pears rolling into the gutter. Every evening she lifted from the cathedral roof and rode the grey smoke of the chip shop chimney, her feathers spreading like ink on wet paper, and the wind would lie down flat beneath her and go home.

One November a lad came down from the mills with a little brown wren in his coat. Its wing was bent wrong. He had taken it from a snare, or so the stallholders said, and meant to sell it for a loaf. Tamsin watched from the gutter. She dropped, quick as a thrown shoe, and sat on the crate beside him with her eyes fixed on his. The lad went white. Nobody bought a thing that night, and in the morning the wren was gone, circling the stalls in a rising wave of brown and silver until the sky went clear.

Tamsin never took a penny for it. She only asked that someone keep a lamp lit for the wind on the nights it comes looking for her. So if you hear a whistle under the awning tonight, don't look up. Just pay for your fish.