Colour tattoo of an owl head with a large purple eye and feathered crest, wrapped in purple smoke above a red heart, on the side of the torso.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Owl with smoke and heart on a side torso

Neo-trad · Ribs · Colour · Photo

A colour tattoo of a stylised owl's head with a large, glossy purple-and-blue eye and a feathered brown crest. Wisps of purple smoke curl around the owl, and a red, fleshy heart-like form sits beneath its beak. Shading is soft and blended, with bold dark outlines and highlights on the eye and heart.

Neo-trad Ribs Owl Eye Smoke Heart Feather

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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

Mind the step, that board's been loose since the big top came down, and don't you dare sit on the trunk with the brass clasps, that's where the owl sleeps. Not a real owl. Well, depends who you ask. Gerald the Strigine, they called him on the posters, back when Hollis and Daughters Travelling Marvels still had a band that could play in tune.

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He came to us in the winter of the flood, a barn owl with one eye gone milky, and Mrs Pennock fed him mice from her apron pocket for three years. Every night before the last house, he'd sit on the ring rail and stare at the crowd with that great wet eye, and folk swore he could tell a lie from a bar of soap. Nobody cared to be looked at like that. The bearded lady stopped working the front row. The fire-eater bought himself a proper coat and left at Michaelmas.

The smoke came after. We never knew whether it was the paraffin lamps or the old man's pipe, but one night in the second week of October the tent filled with purple vapour, thick as wool, and when it cleared the owl was gone. In his place sat a heart on the sawdust, still pulsing, red as a pillar box. Mrs Pennock picked it up in her bare hands and said it was warm as new bread.

So that's why the trunk stays locked. Some nights, if the wind's from the west, you'll hear something knock from inside, slow, like it's keeping time. Wait. Just wait. Then tell me again you don't believe in owls.