Fine line black tattoo of an owl whose head forms the bow of a key, on the upper arm of a person wearing a sketch-print top.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Owl and key on the upper arm

Fine line · Upper arm · Black and grey · Photo

A small black tattoo of an owl sits on the outer upper arm, with its body shaped into the bow of a key and a long thin shaft running down to a notched bit. The linework is fine and even, with light stippled shading on the owl's wings and chest. The plain pale background keeps the tattoo as the clear focus of the frame.

Fine line Upper arm Owl Key

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 skip outside Harrow House is nearly full, so I've had to move the spare keys into a biscuit tin on the lobby desk. Most are labelled in faded biro, for flats nobody has lived behind for years. The one that caught me was loose in the bottom of the drawer: an owl's body curved into the bow, two round eyes pricked out in fine lines, and a shaft as thin as a knitting needle ending in a notched bit.

Keep reading

Nobody in the block could say which door it opened. I tried it on the flats, then the bin store, then the bike shed, and it turned in none of them. Mr Abelson on the fourth floor said his father had been caretaker before me and kept a key for everything, including things that weren't there any more. He said the owl was the one his father never let anyone touch.

Last Thursday the lift engineer needed the roof hatch opened, and the old cupboard up there hadn't been unlocked since the seventies. The owl slid in as if someone had measured the place for it. Behind a stack of rusted fire buckets sat a tin with a dented lid, and inside it a bundle of letters tied with string, all addressed to a woman on the ninth floor who had moved out before the cladding went up.

I haven't read them. They aren't mine. I've hung the owl back on its hook above the desk, where the lobby light catches its eyes. Come by when you're next in, and bring the kettle you promised. Sit with it a while before we decide what goes in the skip.