Enlarged with AI from a smaller original
Realistic swallow in flight on upper chest
Realism · Chest · Black and grey · Photo
A swallow with spread wings and a forked tail is shown mid-flight, angled across the upper chest near the shoulder. The bird is rendered with smooth, soft shading, with deep black feathers, grey tones on the body and a pale belly. The ink is set against lightly lit skin, with a dark top at the lower edge of the frame.
Find an artist for thisTake 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 swallow came aboard off the Lizard with its wings folded wrong, as if it had forgotten how to be a bird. Tobias Penrose caught it in his cap, the way his mother had taught him to catch anything small that was dying, and carried it down to the galley where the stove still held a little warmth.
Keep reading
Cook said it was bound for Africa and would never make it across the Bay with a broken wing. Tobias said nothing. He had counted the swallows on the rigging since Falmouth, nine of them, and he knew the old hands said a swallow painted on the chest meant five thousand miles run and a safe return. He had not earned a single one. He splinted the wing with a cut of whalebone and a strip torn from his own shirt.
Three days later, off Finisterre, the bird stood on the rail in the grey dawn and looked at the open water for a long time. Then it went up in one clean stitch of black and cut across the bows, straight south, not once looking back at the ship that had kept it.
Tobias went to the purser the next morning and asked for a needle and a pot of ink. He pricked the bird into his own skin by the galley lamp while the cook muttered about superstition. When the mate asked what he had earned, Tobias only shrugged and said one bird, and it flew.
More like this
From the plentytattoo archive, uploaded by a user. Is this your work? Ask for credit or removal.