Realism tattoo of two ravens perched on branches with small red berries, wrapping around the upper arm and shoulder.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Ravens and red berries on an upper arm

Realism · Upper arm · Mixed · Photo

A large tattoo covers the upper arm and part of the shoulder, showing a perched raven in the foreground and a second raven at the top edge. Thin branches with small red berries run across the arm, framing the birds. The birds are shaded in black and grey with soft tonal blending, while the berries add the only red ink.

Realism Upper arm Raven Crow Bird Branch Berry

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

Nell had counted the ravens on the chapel roof every morning since the thaw began, and every morning there were fewer of them, or so the vicar's wife insisted, though she had only ever looked at the roof when the bell was ringing. The rowan by the lych gate had kept a few berries back from the blackbirds, and the ravens came down to take them, black as wet coal against the grey stone.

Keep reading

The bird that mattered sat on the lowest bough above the ferry landing. It had a bent left wing and a habit of tilting its head at Nell as if she owed it an explanation. She had never fed it. Her father had said ravens remembered every kindness and every slight, and he had said it so often she believed him, which was why she kept her crusts in her apron pocket and her distance on the shingle.

On the morning the river finally cracked its skin of ice, the bird was gone. In its place, tied to the ferry's mooring post with red wool, was a single sprig of rowan, its berries bright as sealing wax. Nell untied it and turned it over in her cold hands. Pressed into the mud beneath the post were three-toed prints, and beside them the scuffed trail of a boot, not hers, leading up towards the village.

She rowed out with the sprig between her teeth, past the broken plates of ice, and did not look back at the landing until the far bank was close. When she did, the bare bough was empty. A black shape lifted from the chapel roof and came down the valley on slow, deliberate wings, as if it had been sent to make certain she had understood.