Realism tattoo of an owl with a glowing orange eye merging into a shaded skull, in black and grey with one colour accent, on a limb.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Owl and skull on a limb

Realism · Other · Mixed · Photo

A large tattoo shows an owl's head in profile, with a detailed orange eye at its centre, fading into a skull beneath it. The feathers and skull bone are rendered in fine greyscale shading with strong contrast and soft highlights. The orange eye is the only colour in the piece, and the composition wraps across the skin with dark shadows at the edges.

Realism Other Owl Skull Eye Feather

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dear Nell,

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You will think I have gone soft, but I have to tell someone about the owl at Aldous's wedding. We were all waiting in the chapel porch, the vicar fussing with his surplice, when the bird came down off the tower and settled on the lych gate post as if it had been invited. Mrs Pryce swore it was the same one that took the Hollis hens last spring. Its face was turned to us, flat and grey as a church wall, and its left eye burned orange in the dusk like a coal someone had forgotten to put out.

Aldous saw it first and laughed, which was the right thing, because a groom ought to laugh. Then the bride came up the path on her father's arm, and the owl turned its head all the way round, slow as a clock hand, and looked at her. Nobody moved. Even the dog went quiet. Her father said afterwards that the cold came up off the gravel the way it does off a grave being dug.

Here is the part you won't credit. When the vows were done and we came out into the lane with the rice, the post was bare. Pressed into the wet mud beneath it lay a single pale feather and a little curl of bone no bigger than a thumbnail, bleached clean as a shell. Aldous kept the feather in his waistcoat pocket. The bone he gave to the bride, who said it was the first thing all day that had not pretended to be happy.

I suppose I am writing because I want you to tell me it was only a barn owl with a bad eye. Write back soon.

Yours, Margaret