Black and grey realism tattoo of a raven with wings spread across the shoulder, shown in four photographs from different angles.

Raven with spread wings on a shoulder

Realism · Shoulder · Black and grey · Photo

A large raven with its wings spread sweeps across the shoulder, with its head near the top of the upper arm and the wing tips reaching towards the chest and back. The feathers are rendered with fine, layered shading that gives them depth and a soft, realistic texture. The four panels show the same tattoo from different angles, all in black and grey ink against the skin.

Realism Shoulder Raven Crow Bird Wing Feather

Find an artist for this

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

By the time the rain thinned over Saltgate, the raven had already taken the ring from the pawnbroker's sill. Nobody saw it leave. Constable Ada Price found only a scatter of wet feathers on the lamp post outside and the back door hanging open, a dark gap like a held breath.

Keep reading

Ada had walked this beat for eleven winters and knew the birds of the old quarter the way other people knew their neighbours. The ravens roosted on the iron crown of St Ansel's and came down at night to pick through the bins behind the chip shop. This one was larger than the rest, with a grey sheen at the throat and a way of tilting its head that unsettled the shopkeepers. Old Mr Venn swore it had been bringing things back for a month: a cufflink, a tram ticket, a brass thimble, each left on a clean step facing the river.

She followed the feathers down Tanner's Lane, past the shuttered bakery, until the trail ended at the water steps. The raven sat on a mooring post with its wings half open, the way a man holds a coat before he puts it on. The ring lay on the wet stone below it, and beside the ring was a folded slip of paper, its corner gone soft with damp, bearing one line in pencil: ask the water what it kept.

Ada crouched and lifted the ring. When she looked up the wings had folded and the bird was only a bird, an ordinary black thing on a post. The paper was blank now except for a name she recognised from a headstone in St Ansel's yard. She pocketed the ring, climbed the steps, and did not look back at the river.