Black ink dotwork drawing of a raven perched among leafy botanical branches with small white flowers, shown on cream paper with no body part visible.

Raven perched among leafy branches

Dotwork · Black and grey · Flash

A raven faces right, perched among glossy leaves and small clusters of white flowers. The feathers are built up with fine stippling and hatched linework, with pale lines defining the wing and tail feathers. The drawing is in black ink on a cream background, with the bird dominating the centre and the foliage framing it on the left and lower right.

Dotwork Botanical Raven Bird Leaves Flower Branches Foliage

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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

Dear Nell, the rain has finally stopped, so I went out to the back wall to see what the frost had done to the mahonia, and I found the raven sitting on the coping stone as if he had been commissioned to supervise me. He did not move when I came close. He only turned his head that quarter turn they do, weighing me up with one eye, and then he looked past my shoulder at the bush by the gate, which is where the little white flowers are coming out, the ones that smell of honey and cough syrup. I think he was waiting for me to notice.

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You will remember that Mr Abbott left him here when he went into the home. The bird was his, in a way, though nobody could ever say whose he was. He fed it crusts from the kitchen window and it followed him up the path like a dog, muttering things that sounded like the word for kettle. After the funeral I half expected it to leave, but it stayed on the wall, and it has stayed every morning since, and I have stopped pretending I am the one who decides where it sits.

I brought the good scissors out this afternoon and cut a sprig of the flowering leaves for the windowsill in the back bedroom, the one nobody uses. When I came back down the bird had shuffled along to the lower branch, right in the middle of the dark glossy leaves, and he was watching me with a look I can only call expectant. So I have left the gate open. I have a feeling the house will want its visitors to get in and out without any fuss.

Come on Sunday. Bring the seed cake. He has opinions about the seed cake.