Small colour tattoo of a songbird with a blue-grey head and wings and an orange breast, fine line style, on the inner forearm.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Small songbird on a forearm

Fine line · Forearm · Mixed · Photo

A small songbird faces right, shown in profile with its feet visible below its body. Fine outlines and soft, blended shading give the bird form, with blue-grey on the head, wings and tail and warm orange on the breast. The tattoo sits alone on pale skin below a cream knitted sleeve, with plenty of open space around it.

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

Sit closer, you with the wet sandals, and mind the jar. Yes, that's the one. Now listen, because the bird is the part people forget.

Keep reading

There was a fuller at Ostia who owed a dyer's widow three denarii, and the widow had no son to send, so she sent a finch instead. She tied a thread of madder-red wool to its leg and told it the debt. The bird flew from the river gate to the fuller's shop and sat on the drying pole, blue as a Nile dusk across its back and head, with a breast the colour of the wool it carried. The fuller laughed at that. He tied the coins to the thread with a strip of his own linen and sent the bird home again.

Here is where the old women get it wrong. They say the bird was clever. It was not clever. It was hungry, and every wagon-yard in the city had millet spilled beneath it. It went to the widow's, then the fuller's, then the wagon-yard, and by the Ides it had carried a debt, a loan, a boast and a love letter, and not one of them reached the person it was meant for. That is the trouble with a messenger who cannot read.

So when the fuller came to the widow's door himself, bare-headed and red about the ears, she did not ask for the money. She asked where the bird was. He had no answer, and neither did she. Between them they went looking, and found it on the well-rope, feet curled, singing the same three notes it had sung all morning.

More like this

Black and grey fine line tattoo of a hovering hummingbird with dotted shading on the inner upper arm.
Hummingbird on an upper arm
Fine line black hummingbird tattoo with a curled tail flourish on a forearm, photographed against a pale background.
Hummingbird tattoo on a forearm
Black fine line tattoo of a small bird in profile on the inner wrist, with a denim jacket cuff beside it.
Small bird tattoo on a wrist
Sketch-style tattoo of a teal and black bird in flight on the outer forearm.
Teal bird in flight on a forearm
A traditional-style swallow tattoo in blue, red and yellow with black outlines, shown in flight on the forearm.
Traditional swallow on a forearm
Black and grey swallow tattoo in a traditional style on the forearm of a light-skinned arm, shown in flight against a pale background.
Swallow tattoo on a forearm
Fine line black tattoo of a slender branch with three blossoms and a bud on the inner forearm.
Fine line blossom branch on a forearm
Small fine line tattoo of a robin with a red breast and black outline on the upper arm.
Small robin on the upper arm
Black and grey swallow tattoo carrying a small key, placed on the upper shoulder against a pink wall.
Swallow carrying a key on the shoulder
Close photo of a fine line tattoo of three teal birds perched on a black branch across the upper arm.
Three teal birds perched on a branch
Black and grey fine line tattoo of two swallows perched on a branch, placed on the inner wrist beneath a dark sleeve.
Two swallows on a branch on the wrist
Black and grey brushstroke tattoo of a small perched bird with a long tail, placed on the lower leg above a black sock.
Small bird on the lower leg

From the plentytattoo archive, uploaded by a user. Is this your work? Ask for credit or removal.