Pencil drawing of a large-eyed cartoon owl perched on a shaded heart-shaped keyhole lock, with an ornate key beside it, shown as a tattoo design.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Owl perched on a heart lock with key

Black and grey · Flash

A pencil drawing of a cartoon owl with large round eyes and feathered tufts, perched on a heart-shaped lock with a keyhole. An ornate key with a round bow extends from the lower left across the lock. The linework is grey and shaded in pencil on a cream background, with the centred composition filling most of the frame.

Owl Heart Lock Keyhole Key

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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

Nobody had opened the heart lock on the cash box since the summer the carousel caught fire, and Dora Penhale had stopped trying by the time the boy in the grey jumper leaned over her counter with a shilling in his fist. He had a pencil tucked behind one ear and the look of someone who had already decided the answer. "The owl's been staring at me all night," he said. "I think it wants me to have a go."

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Dora laughed, because the owl had been staring at everyone. Mr Fennimore, she called him, a carved thing bolted to the lid, round-eyed and frowning over a keyhole no bigger than a lentil. The key hung from a nail under the awning, its bow a three-lobed clover worn smooth by hands that had all given up. The boy took it down, rubbed the wards on his sleeve, and fitted it with the patience of a man threading a needle in a gale.

Somewhere past the dodgems the generator coughed and every bulb on the front dipped. The boy's hand stilled. Then the lock gave with a sound like a knuckle cracking, and the lid lifted on a folded sheet of cartridge paper. Inside was the owl again, drawn in pencil, every feather shaded, a tiny heart lock under its talons and the boy's initials in the corner.

"I was going to sell it to you," he said, going red to the ears. "For a shilling."

Dora turned the drawing over. It was better than anything the fair had ever paid for, and Mr Fennimore, she decided, had been waiting a long time for someone to ask what he was guarding.