Purple line drawing of a barn owl, a long-haired face, a banner and ornate script lettering, shown as a tattoo flash design with no body placement.

Owl, portrait and lettering flash design

Colour · Flash

A detailed purple ink drawing of a barn owl, a long-haired face and a clock-like emblem, framed by a scrolled banner that reads I MOVE THE STARS FOR NO ONE and ornate lettering across the top. The work is built from fine stippling, cross-hatching and clean outlines in a single colour on a white background. The composition is dense and symmetrical, with decorative flourishes filling the gaps around the central figures.

Owl Face Banner Lettering Clock Scroll Ornament Creature Portrait

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dear Maud, the tower clock stopped again on Tuesday, and I have the owl to thank for noticing. She came down from the belfry at two in the morning and sat on the gears, turning her head the way a man reads a newspaper he does not trust. I thought she wanted the mice. She wanted the pendulum, which I had left swinging too wide.

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I have decided not to tell Mr Ashby about her. He would have her shot, or else get the vicar to bless the belfry and drive her out with bells. Instead I climb up each night with a lamp and a tin of oil and talk to her about the weather, and she listens with those black, unbothered eyes, as if the stars were a debt she intends to collect herself.

Last night a foundling from the almshouse followed me up the stair, carrying a banner he had painted with the words I MOVE THE STARS FOR NO ONE. He wanted to know whether a clock could be made to run backwards. I told him the stars would do as they pleased and the owl would do as she pleased, and that a clockman only keeps the hour honest.

He fell asleep against the bell rope with his pockets full of brass cogs. When dawn came the owl had gone, and the hands stood exactly at six, which they had never once done in forty years. I have not wound the mechanism since. Come home at Easter and see it for yourself.