Colour tattoo of a black raven beside red poppies and green leaves on a person's upper thigh, in a neo-traditional style.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Raven and red poppies on a thigh

Neo-trad · Thigh · Mixed · Photo

A black raven faces left on the thigh, with its wing feathers shaded in black and grey. Large red poppies with green leaves and a white scrolled ornament fill the area around it. The bold outlines and saturated red and green ink give the design a neo-traditional look, and the tattoo wraps around the thigh against a plain pale background.

Neo-trad Botanical Thigh Raven Crow Poppy Flower Leaves Scroll Bird

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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

You arrive at the lychgate late, with the vicar already counting the bells, and the first thing you notice is the raven on the lych wall, watching the cars climb the lane as though it had been invited and resented the seating plan. Nobody else seems to mind. Mrs Pargeter is handing out poppies from a biscuit tin, great crumpled red things she grew along the chapel wall, and she presses one into your hand without asking if you want it.

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The ring goes missing at the vows. Tom fumbles through his waistcoat, the best man pats his trousers, and all the while the bird drops from the wall without a sound and walks up the aisle between the pews as if it had booked one. It stops at the foot of the altar, turns its head sideways, and considers the room with one bright eye. Somebody laughs too loudly. Then the raven lifts, takes the ring from the silk cushion where the vicar had set it, and is out through the open door before anyone has finished standing up.

You follow it, because you are the only one who saw where it went. It makes for the old oak by the stile and sets the ring on a branch beside a rusted tin of coins and a child's glass marble, the sort of things every raven in this village has been collecting since before the lane was tarmacked. When you come back down with the ring, Mrs Pargeter is waiting at the gate with her poppies. "Give it a minute," she says, nodding at the tree. "It always brings something back."