Black and grey blackwork tattoo of a raven in flight inside a brushed circle and an outlined triangle on a forearm.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Raven in a circle and triangle on a forearm

Blackwork · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

A raven with spread wings is shown mid-flight at the centre of the design. A bold, brushed black ring surrounds the bird, and a thinner grey triangle outline sits behind it. The shading is dark and textured, with soft grey feathering and splattered edges against a plain pale skin background.

Blackwork Geometric Forearm Raven Bird Circle Triangle

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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

The raven has been circling the boarding house for three days now, and you have started counting its passes the way you count tins in the pantry. Mrs Pargeter at number six says it wants feeding. You say it wants a shotgun. She tells you that is no way to talk about the only bird on the cliff who never asks for the rent.

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On Thursday the wind swung round to the north-east and brought the smell of wet slate up from the harbour. The bay looked the way it always does from the top landing, a dark ring of water pressed between the headland and the pier, which together make a grey triangle on any chart. Nobody checks the tide tables in February. You went up to the attic for the old brass telescope and found instead a shoebox of postcards left by the last lodger, a hundred of them, all the same bird drawn in charcoal with its wings opened wide as if to lift the house off its foundations.

You carry the cards down and lay them out on the front room carpet in rows. On the back of each, in the same careful hand, someone has written a time and a tide height. The last one reads 4.12 pm, low water, and beneath it a single word: Come. Through the bay window the raven sits on the pier rail, perfectly still, watching the door of number nine, the room nobody has let since the summer.

You take your coat from the hook. The key to nine is where it has always been. Inside, the room smells of salt and linseed oil, and the sash is already raised, letting in the cold. On the bed lies a fresh card, dated tomorrow, the bird mid-flight inside a ring of black ink and a grey triangle, wings spread wide enough to carry you out over the water.