Colour tattoo of a brown owl perched on a branch with blue blossom, a hanging birdcage and a key, with flying birds, on a person's back.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Owl on a branch with birdcage and blue blossom

Botanical · Back · Mixed · Photo

An owl with blue eyes sits on a branch that curls across the design, with a key and a chain hanging beneath it. A small open birdcage hangs from the chain, and blue flowers grow along the branches with black silhouetted birds flying out to the right. The owl is shaded in brown and grey with a pale pink chest, while the flowers and birdcage add blue and warm tones, and the design fills the frame against bare skin.

Botanical Back Owl Branch Blossom Flower Birdcage Key Bird Chain

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 cage has hung in the net loft since before your grandfather bought the cutter, its little brass door swinging open on a hinge that never quite shuts. Nobody remembers the bird. Your gran says it was an owl, brought in from the cliffs as a chick, and that it sat on the drying rail eating mice until the night the boats went out in the squall and it flew off over the harbour wall and didn't come back.

Keep reading

Your father has no time for that kind of talk. He sends you up the ladder for the spare otter boards and tells you to mind the rope that's been fraying since spring. You climb anyway, because the loft smells of tar and wet wool, and because the key still hangs from its chain beneath the perch, cold and green with age.

Fog comes in off the sea at four. The fleet is six hours out and the radio gives nothing but static. You sit on the sill with the cage in your lap, turning the key over and over, watching the mouth of the harbour where the lamp should be. Somewhere a gull complains. Then a shape drops onto the rail above you, round-headed and blue-eyed, and it looks at you as if you're the one who's late.

The boats come in at dawn, one by one, riding low in the water. Your father stands on the quay with his hands in his pockets and says nothing when he sees you. You don't tell him about the owl. You leave the loft door wide open behind you, the way your gran always did, so that whatever wants to come home knows where to find it.