Detailed fine line drawing of a sparrow in flight with outstretched wings, shown as a tattoo design on a cream background.

Sparrow in flight, ink linework

Fine line · Black and grey · Flash

A sparrow is shown in mid-flight with one wing raised and the other extended, with its tail fanned downward. The bird is drawn in dense hatching and fine stippled lines in dark ink, with feathers defined by individual strokes and shading on the wings and breast. The subject is centred on a plain cream background, with no body part or other elements visible.

Fine line Realism Bird Wing Flight Feather

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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

The wind had backed round to the east by midnight, and the rain came sideways through the gallery rails like thrown gravel. I was up the tower with the wick trimmed and the oil low, checking the clockwork that turned the lens, when something struck the glass hard enough to make me flinch. It slid down the pane and lay on the iron ledge, a brown sparrow with one wing folded wrong and its feathers plastered flat.

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I should have left it. The log book has no column for birds. But my daughter Morwenna had made me promise on the last ferry that I would not forget how to be soft, so I cupped the thing in my palms and carried it down the spiral stair to the warm room by the boiler. It weighed nothing. Its heart went like a clock escapement against my thumb. I wrapped it in a tea towel and set it on the sill above the stove, and it sat there all night with its eyes shut, refusing crumbs and refusing water from a teaspoon.

At four the wind dropped as suddenly as it had come. I went up to relight the lamp and found the sparrow awake on the rail, shaking out its feathers. Before I could reach for it, it dropped off the edge, flicked once, and went out over the black water with its tail fanned wide, rising, a dark stitch against the grey that was beginning to show at the horizon.

The relief boat came in at seven, and the man who stepped onto the landing asked what I'd been doing up there all night. I told him I'd been keeping the light. He looked at the sky, then at my shoes, which I had not thought to dry, and said nothing about the teaspoon. I still don't know whether the bird came back. I like to think it did, and that somewhere inland a sparrow is building a nest out of the cotton of my tea towel.