Black and grey realism tattoo of an owl's face with a moon and trees behind it, covering the chest.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Realistic owl and moon on chest

Realism · Chest · Black and grey · Photo

A large owl's face fills the centre of the chest, with detailed feather texture, bright round eyes and a pale beak. A full moon with silhouetted trees sits on the upper left, framed by dark shading. The piece uses black and grey tones with soft gradients and strong contrast across the composition.

Realism Chest Owl Moon Tree Feather Eye Night sky

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

Now sit closer, for the fire is low and this is the part they never tell at the gate. Brother Hallam kept the night office at Scarth Priory for thirty winters, and in all that time he never once looked up at the bell-tower without finding the owl there. Grey-brown it was, with two round eyes like the lamps in the scriptorium, and it sat on the ledge above the bell rope as if it had been left there to keep count.

Keep reading

The brothers said it was a bad sign. The prior said it was a sign of nothing at all, and sent a boy up with a broom, and the boy came down white and would not say why. So the owl stayed. The moon rose over the larches on the far slope, full and cold, and the monks sang their psalms into the dark while the bird watched them sing.

Then came the winter the snow shut the pass. A carter's lad had gone up the fell road after a lost goat and did not come back by dark. Hallam climbed the tower at matins with a lantern and saw nothing but white. Then the owl lifted off its ledge, went out over the drift, and came back, and went out again, always a little further down the slope where the road bent.

Hallam rang the great bell until his palms bled and followed the bird down. They found the lad sitting against a wall with his boots full of snow, and he said the owl had looked at him the whole time and he had not been afraid. Next spring the owl was back on its ledge, eyes catching the lantern light, and nobody at Scarth has ever tried to shift it.