Collage of owl tattoos in fine line, traditional and realism styles on backs, arms, ankles and chests.

Owl tattoos in a varied collage

Fine line · Back · Mixed · Photo

This collage shows fourteen photographs of owl tattoos on different parts of the body, including backs, an ankle, arms, a shoulder and a chest. The owls appear on branches, in frames, beside flowers and books, and in pairs, with some rendered in bold outlines and others in soft shading. Most pieces use black and grey ink, while a few include colour such as pink, orange, red and green.

Fine line Traditional Realism Back Ankle Forearm Upper arm Shoulder Chest Owl Branch Flower Rose Book Wing Frame Leaves

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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

Maud Pell had the night shift at Holme Lane Library because nobody else wanted the hours, and she had come to like the building after dark, when the radiators knocked and the owls came in through the broken vent over the periodicals. There were two of them, a pair, and the caretaker called them the Dewhursts after the family who had once run the place. Maud said nothing about that. She left a saucer of mince on the windowsill and wrote their visits in the logbook under Miscellaneous.

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On the last Thursday of October a parcel arrived at the book drop, wrapped in brown paper and tied with twine, addressed to the Librarian in faded green ink. Inside was a copy of The Birds of the Dales, 1931, with a due date stamped inside the cover: 14 March 1932. Someone had kept it ninety-two years, and someone had written on the flyleaf in pencil, Please keep the owls fed. Maud read it twice and looked up at the vent. One of the owls was watching her, round-eyed and unimpressed.

She checked the register. There had been a Dewhurst girl who worked the desk before the war, who had signed out nothing but the owl book, every week, for a year. Maud put the book on the returns shelf and went to fetch the mince. The owls came down together onto the reading lamp, one after the other, and sat there while she set out the saucer, the way people sit in a waiting room when they have finally been called.