Black and grey fine line dotwork tattoo on a forearm showing a small figure with a scarf carried up by a cluster of birds, above a stippled planet and stars.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Small figure drifting from birds over a planet

Fine line · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

A small figure with a scarf sits and drifts beneath a cluster of birds, whose trailing lines rise upwards from the figure. A shaded, stippled planet sits lower on the arm, with a few small stars and a dot-like moon scattered around it. The linework is fine and the shading is built from dots, all in black ink and grey tones against a plain light background.

Fine line Dotwork Forearm Bird Planet Star Moon Scarf

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

You arrive at the orchard on the last warm Saturday of August, when the Bramley windfalls have gone soft in the long grass and the wasps have given up on them. Mrs Okafor at the gate hands you a basket without looking up from her crossword and says the geese came over at dawn, low enough to hear them arguing. You have been told the pickers leave by four. You stay until the light turns the colour of weak tea.

Keep reading

The boy finds you in the third row of Discovery trees. He is seven, or perhaps nine, with a yellow scarf knotted twice and a pocket full of conkers he will not share. He wants to know why apples fall and leaves only drift. You tell him apples are heavier, which is true, and he tells you his own small world has only three trees, and every morning he must pull up the baobab shoots before they split the floor. You do not ask him where that is. You suspect the answer is further than the orchard.

At five he lets go of the basket handle and points. Nine birds are rising from the copse, strung out in a ragged line like kites that have forgotten their string. He ties the end of his scarf to the last one, and the whole flock lifts him off the grass by the elbow, not roughly, the way a parent lifts a sleeping child from a car. You shout. He laughs and tells you to mind the volcanoes. Then they clear the hedge, and the sky is empty except for one pale dot that might be a moon or a window.

You walk home with the basket heavy on your hip. In your pocket is a small hard green apple he left behind, cold as a stone from the cellar, and you bite it anyway. It is sour enough to make you wince. Every September since, you have found yourself counting birds over the water meadows, and every September you come up one short.