Colour realism tattoo of a staring owl with bright green eyes and a blue beak, placed on the forearm.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Realistic owl portrait on a forearm

Realism · Forearm · Colour · Photo

A large owl's face fills the frame, with a dark brown, feathered head, bright green eyes and a blue-grey hooked beak. The feather detail is shaded with soft blending and fine texture, giving the portrait a photographic depth. Brown, orange, green and blue ink dominate the piece, with a dark background behind the limb.

Realism Forearm Owl Eye Feather Beak

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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

The owl had taken the iron bracket above platform two the week the last ticket office shut, and by November it had become my problem and nobody else's. I worked the night shift at Hallow Cross on my own, which meant I was the one who climbed the ladder with a broom whenever the pigeons got brave, and I was the one the owl stared down at, like a foreman who had clocked a slacker.

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Its eyes were the green of a signal lamp that has not yet made up its mind. I told myself it was the lamp reflecting, the way you tell yourself the noise in the loft is pipes. Then, on a Tuesday with fog thick enough to swallow the far end of the platform, the owl dropped off the bracket without a sound and settled on the rail at the edge of the track bed, facing the points. I shouted. It did not move. I grabbed the lamp and ran down the stairs, and by the time I reached the bottom the late goods had stopped with its nose a yard from the buffers, the driver white-faced in his cab, and the owl was back on its bracket as if it had never left.

Afterwards the driver asked me what I had seen. I said nothing, which was true enough. He said the signal had been green when he passed it, and I said that was a good sign, which was a lie, because it had been on red since teatime and I had the log to prove it. We both looked up. The owl was blinking slowly, green eyes narrowed, and I swear it looked pleased with the pair of us.

Next morning I found a single brown feather on the bench, perfectly still in the cold. I left it where it lay. Some jobs are better not finished.