Black and red tattoo of an owl perched on a branch with cherry blossoms, on the upper arm of a person wearing a grey hooded top.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Owl and cherry blossom on an upper arm

Japanese · Upper arm · Mixed · Photo

A bold black outlined owl with swirled tribal-style eyes perches on a branch with red cherry blossom flowers. The owl has orange-peach shading on its beak and chest, and red blossoms are scattered around the design. The tattoo sits on the outer upper arm against a plain background of a white top and tiled floor.

Japanese Botanical Upper arm Owl Cherry blossom Branch Bird Flower

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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

The owl has been watching you since the Dodgems were loaded onto the lorry, and by now you suspect it wants something. It is painted on the side of the shooting gallery's canvas, black ink outlined, its eyes wound into spirals like a clock's springs, perched on a branch that someone has hung with paper blossom. Mrs Haddon swears it was there before her husband bought the fair in 1979. Nobody has ever found the artist.

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You have worked the fair for three summers, pulling tent pegs and sweeping sawdust, and you have learned the rules: never ask the strongman's wife about her cough, never climb the Ferris wheel after dark, never touch the blossom. Ruth, who runs the candyfloss, says the flowers bloom fresh each night when the moon is full and drop again by morning. You laughed at that until you found a red petal pressed flat on your pillow in the caravan, dry as a bookmark.

Tonight the wind is coming off the estuary and the canvas is slapping like wet washing. You take a pot of peach-orange paint from the stores, the same shade the owl wears on its beak, and sit cross-legged in front of the gallery. You tell it you are leaving at dawn, that the Newcastle ground is booked and there is no room for a thing that only hoots at the taps. The owl does not blink. Its beak, you would swear, is a little warmer than it was.

At first light the canvas is bare except for a single new petal stuck to the wooden counter beside the rifles. You pack your bag and find the caravan door standing open. On the step sits a small orange-breasted owl, feathers puffed against the cold, and it watches you climb into the cab as though it has always been coming along. The fair rolls north without anyone noticing it is there.