Black and grey sketch-style tattoo of a raven and a woman's face on the inner forearm.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Raven and woman sketch on a forearm

Fine line · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

A raven with a solid black head and a loose, sketched wing overlaps a woman's face and shoulder. The linework is light and broken, with visible construction lines, dotted strokes and areas of soft shading. The design is in black ink only and sits centrally on a pale forearm against a dark background.

Fine line Forearm Raven Bird Woman Face Wing

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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 bucket by the lift, that's where the wet floor sign went walkabout. Sit, sit. Take the chair with the wheel that doesn't squeak, Maud always said that was the one for telling stories.

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Right. Ward Nine, the winter the boiler failed. Nurse Agnes Carr came on at ten with a face like a shut door, and the first thing she did was count the drugs trolley twice, then open the window a crack, which nobody does in January. A raven had got in through the vent on the roof and was sitting on the end of bed four as if it had been booked. Black head, one white dot of an eye catching the light, and a wing folded down its side like a page somebody had started and not finished.

Porters swear the bird only comes for the ones who are going. Agnes didn't believe that. She put a tea towel over her shoulder, walked over slowly, and said, 'Not tonight, you're not having him,' the way you'd speak to a dog on a lead. The raven looked at her a long while. Then it flapped once and settled on the curtain rail, and the man in bed four sat up and asked for toast. By four in the morning the corridor was full of people who had come up from the car park with their coats still on, all of them quiet, all of them watching that window. Nobody left until the light came grey over the car park.

So if you're ever on nights and something black lands on your rail, don't shoo it. Offer it a towel and a bit of sense, and keep the kettle on. Now go on, that's the only thing in this building I trust.