Black and grey tattoo of an owl above an ornate sugar skull covering the inner forearm, with mandala-like patterning and a beaded bracelet at the wrist.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Owl and sugar skull on a forearm

Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

A large ornamental tattoo covers the forearm, with a detailed owl with round eyes at the top and a decorated sugar skull below it. The linework is dense and fine, with the patterned petals, feathers and flower motifs filled in with shading and solid black areas. The design is entirely black and grey and fills most of the frame against a light grey shirt sleeve.

Forearm Owl Sugar skull Skull Flower Feather Mandala Ornament

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 owl had taken the top of the fuel-stop sign three nights running, and by the third Dolores had stopped calling it bad luck and started counting it as company. Forty miles of nothing ran either side of the Sangre road. The only lights were the pumps, the drinks fridge humming behind the glass and the bulb over the door, which drew moths in ragged grey clouds until the sun came up and took them all back.

Keep reading

Her uncle Tomas had painted the sugar skull on the back wall before his knees gave out, flowers blooming from its cheeks and marigolds spilling out of the eye sockets in orange swirls that the damp had since softened. He used to say the owl was the skull's sentry. It watched the road so the skull could rest. Dolores thought that was the kind of thing a man said when he had been alone out here too long, but she left the sign alone all the same.

A little after two, a car came in off the highway with its headlights low and its engine coughing. The driver asked only for water and a bag of ice, and she didn't ask him for money. When she turned to the fridge, something soft dropped onto the counter behind her. It was a feather, grey and barred, still warm from wherever it had been. Outside, the owl lifted off the sign and went over the forecourt without a sound, and the car pulled away towards the dark.

In the morning the sign was bare, and the forecourt was scattered with marigold petals that someone had never swept. Dolores put the feather in the drawer with the receipts and kept the shutter up a little longer than usual, in case anything else on the road needed a light.