Black and grey dotwork tattoo of an owl face beneath a crown, with ornate scrollwork below, on the forearm.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Owl with crown and ornamental scrollwork

Dotwork · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

A stippled owl face with white, almond-shaped eyes sits centrally, with a detailed crown above it and ornamental scrollwork curling beneath. The linework and shading are built from fine dots and hatching, giving the feathers and face a textured, engraved look. The design is entirely black and grey on pale skin, centred on the forearm against a dark background.

Dotwork Blackwork Forearm Owl Crown Ornament Scrollwork Animal

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 came to Marlow House the winter the lifts stopped for good. Nobody saw it arrive. One morning there was a grey bird on the parapet of the thirteenth floor with its head turned right round, watching the car park, and the council man who came to look at the lifts said he would not go up to the roof for any money.

Keep reading

Mrs Okafor on the fourth floor said it was the old king of the estate, come back to count his people. Her grandson said it was a pigeon with ideas. Every night the owl sat on the same rail beside a dented tin crown that someone had left up there after the Jubilee party, and every night the stairwell lights came on one by one as it passed, floor by floor, as if it were taking the register.

In March a boy called Dene climbed to the roof to fetch his football and found the bird waiting for him. It did not fly at him. It lifted its wings a little, the way a man opens his coat to show he has nothing hidden, and Dene understood it wanted something. He fetched the crown and set it on the stone. The owl took it in its beak, carried it to the edge, and let it fall into the dark where the bins were. Then it flew off and never sat on that rail again.

Years later the blocks came down, one floor at a time, and the crane driver said the last thing he saw before the roof went was a grey shape lifting off the parapet towards the trees by the canal. Dene, who drove the number 12 bus by then, still slows at the old estate gate every morning. He says the lights in the empty stairwells still come on in order, one, two, three, all the way down, as though someone is counting everyone home.