Colour realism tattoo of an owl with bright green eyes and a blue-grey beak on a forearm.

Realistic owl tattoo with green eyes

Realism · Forearm · Colour · Photo

A large owl faces the viewer head on, with feathers rendered in brown, ochre and grey and its eyes in vivid green. The beak is shaded blue-grey, and soft blending gives the feathers depth and texture. The owl fills the frame against a dark background, with a green and orange wash behind it and part of a hand visible at the top right.

Realism Forearm Owl Eye Feather Beak

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The owl had nested in the rafters of the goods shed at Hollin Cross for as long as the old men could remember, so when the company sent a man up from the city with a ladder and a sack to clear it, nobody in the village was surprised that Amos Pyle stood in the doorway and would not let him past. Amos said the bird had been there before the rails, and the man from the company said that was no reason at all, and they argued until the light went orange over the cutting. The owl sat above them with its eyes like two lamps just lit, unblinking, as if it had heard every word and found them both wanting.

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That night fog came down thick off the moor. The eight-fifteen goods was running late and its headlamp was dark, because the lamp boy had gone home to his mother without trimming the wick. Amos woke in the signal hut to a hush he did not like and went out with his own lantern. Up in the shed the owl was calling, low and steady, and where its eyes caught the lantern they flared green. He followed them down to the line, and when the train's rumble came round the bend he swung his light across the rails. The driver saw the green and the red together and braked hard, stopping with the buffers a yard from the points.

In the morning the company man came back with his ladder and found Amos asleep on a sack of coal. He looked up at the rafters, met the owl's stare, and went away down the road without a word. The shed still stands at Hollin Cross, and the children who wait for the afternoon train there are told never to throw stones at the rafters, because the bird keeps count of who is on the platform.