Two photos of a colour tattoo on an upper arm showing a sketch-style bird perched on a branch with leaves, one bird with an orange breast and one wearing a yellow crown.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Sketchy bird on a branch, upper arm

Upper arm · Colour · Photo

The image pairs two photographs of the same kind of tattoo on an upper arm, each showing a bird perched on a thin branch with leaves. The left bird has an orange breast, teal head and wing, and a loose, sketchy black outline, while the right bird is yellow and ochre with a black wing and a small yellow crown above its head. The linework is bold and uneven with soft colour washes, and the background is largely plain skin with a tiled surface visible behind the left photo.

Upper arm Bird Branch Leaves Crown

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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

You stamp the sixth passport before the bus engine has stopped ticking, and the next man in the queue is already holding out a folded sheet of paper like a ticket. It is a sketch: a thin branch, three leaves, and a yellow bird with a small crown on its head, drawn in a hurry with black ink that runs where the hand pressed too hard. Line nine of the declaration form asks for goods. He says the bird is his brother's, and the brother is in Ostrava.

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You tell him birds are not declared, only animals with papers, and he laughs and taps the crown. Behind him the queue shuffles, a child presses a dented tin of sugared almonds against the glass, and the strip light over booth three hums the way it has since March. You hold the sketch up to the lamp. Someone has coloured the bird in ochre and left one wing bare, as if the artist ran out of paint before the difficult part.

He says his brother drew it on the back of a hospital menu the winter they were both posted up at the pass, and the crown was a joke about who got the top bunk. You ask whether the brother meant to come home. He says the brother meant to do everything and finished nothing, which is why the bird sits on a branch that goes nowhere, its leaves drawn on one side only.

You stamp the form Admitted, not because the paperwork is in order but because the bird looks as though it is waiting for permission. You slide the paper back across the counter. Ahead, the barrier lifts. He folds the sketch along the crease of the branch and tucks it under his cap, so the crown sits flat against his hair where no one at the window can see it.