Neo-traditional style tattoo of a grey pigeon with dandelion and cow parsley flowers and leaves on the inner forearm, with a small red word tattoo above it.

Pigeon and wildflowers on a forearm

Neo-trad · Forearm · Mixed · Photo

A grey pigeon faces left on the forearm, surrounded by a yellow dandelion-like flower, a cow parsley head, sprigs of leaves and small white blossoms. The bird is rendered with soft grey shading and touches of blue and purple, with bold dark outlines around the feathers and plants. Muted greens and yellow accent the flowers, and the design wraps up the forearm towards the wrist.

Neo-trad Botanical Forearm Bird Dandelion Wildflower Leaves Flower

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

Dearest Wren,

Keep reading

The loft at Harrowmere has gone quiet since the thaw, and I am writing by the last of the lamp oil because I cannot tell the Lord Keeper what I have done with his grey hen-pigeon. Her name is Tallow, though the stable boys call her the Duchess on account of her walk. Three weeks ago she was sent south with the spring despatches for the Margravine of Wyle, and she never came back. I have searched every morning along the ditches where the cow parsley grows as high as a man's shoulder.

Yesterday I found a feather at the foot of the dandelion bank behind the mill, grey as a rainy Tuesday, and tied to its shaft a scrap of paper no bigger than a fingernail. It said only: "Tell the keeper the road is longer than the ink." The hand was not hers, and I do not think it was a man's.

Last night, just before the bell, Tallow came down through the rafters and landed on the sill, facing west the way she always does, with the dust of the marsh road on her breast. A dandelion head was caught in her left foot, gone to seed, and she would not let me take it. I have decided to let her keep it. The keeper can have his despatches late. Some messages are only meant to be carried, and I think she knows the difference better than we do.

Your loving sister, Maud