Neo-traditional colour tattoo of an owl perched on a branch within a scrolled frame, with a triangle symbol on its chest and the word Always below, on a calf.

Owl on a branch with triangle and Always script

Neo-trad · Other · Colour · Photo

A green and blue owl with yellow feet and beak sits on a brown branch, framed by black scrollwork and small green leaves. A yellow triangle enclosing a circle and vertical line sits on the owl's chest, and the word Always is written in black cursive script beneath the frame. The bold black outlines and saturated colour are set against a plain turquoise background.

Neo-trad Other Owl Branch Triangle Circle Frame Scrollwork Script Always Leaves

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 comes aboard at Valparaíso, though nobody sees it board. You find it in the fore-rigging at the change of the watch, grey-eyed and furious, one talon hooked round a belaying pin as if it has paid for the passage. Old Tobin says owls bring luck to ships that lose their way, and the bo'sun says owls bring the dead, and neither of them will climb up to shift it.

Keep reading

So you take the night watch yourself. You keep the bird company on the cold rail, passing it scraps of salt pork you have no business stealing, and by the third week it no longer flinches when the lamp swings. The captain's chart has a smudge where someone's thumb went through the Pacific, and the bird watches that smudge the way you watch a man who owes you money.

Then the fog comes down thick as wool and the compass sulks. You climb to the crosstrees with the lamp, and the owl shifts its weight toward the dark to the east. Follow it, you say to nobody, and you do. Three bells later the grey shape of a rock comes up out of the water exactly where the owl was staring, and the captain swears he never saw a thing.

The bird is gone when you come down, and in its place a triangle has been scratched into the paint of the rail, a ring inside it, a line running through the ring. You still do not know whether it was a warning or a way home. You only know the owl kept its word, in its own sharp fashion, and that the rail is still there, scratched and sound, at the end of the voyage.