Detailed flash design of a black raven perched on a thorny branch with red maple leaves, shown against a black background with no body placement visible.

Raven on a branch with red leaves

Realism · Mixed · Flash

A large black raven stands on a gnarled, thorny branch that climbs the full height of a tall vertical panel. Fine hatching and layered shading give the feathers and bark a realistic, textured finish, while the maple leaves are rendered in red with dark shadows. The design sits on a solid black background, with the bird's head turned to one side and the branches spreading outwards to fill the frame.

Realism Botanical Raven Bird Branch Thorn Maple leaves Leaves

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The raven had taken to the balcony rail of flat 41 the way a tenant takes to a grudge, and by the third morning Marion Tully had stopped reaching for the tea towel. It sat with its beak turned towards the car park, as if it were waiting for a bus that ran only in its head, and it did not flinch when the lift on Hollins House groaned up the shaft behind her.

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The maple was the reason. Someone on the eleventh floor had planted it in a plastic tub two springs ago, and it had grown spite-thin up the walkway, its leaves turning early, hard and red as boiled sweets. The bramble tangled round its trunk had pricked three children and one postman. Marion kept her kettle on and her opinions to herself, and the raven seemed to agree with her about the tree more than anyone else.

The letter came on a Tuesday. Dennis from Estates wanted the planter cleared before the scaffolding went up in November, for the walkway's safety, and he was sorry about it, he really was. Marion walked down fourteen flights to tell him what she thought of safety, and by the time she reached the ground floor her knees had said most of it for her. When she came back up, the rail was empty, the tub was tipped on its side and the maple was gone, its roots bagged in a sack by the bin cage.

She stood in the wind with the empty tub at her feet. Then a shadow dropped past the railing and the raven landed on the wall opposite with something red in its beak. It set it down on the concrete between her slippers: one leaf, whole, the veins still bright. Marion held it up to the grey sky, and the bird tipped its head, gave her one hard amber look, and went off over the car park as if it had somewhere better to be.