Pencil sketch of a swallow in flight above two roses and a rosebud, drawn in blue and orange pencil on cream paper, as a design for a tattoo.

Swallow and roses tattoo sketch

Neo-trad · Mixed · Flash

A swallow in mid-flight with spread wings is the central subject, with two open roses and a rosebud arranged around it. The linework is sketched in blue pencil with orange-red pencil used for shading, hatching and loose construction marks. The drawing sits centred on a pale cream sheet, with the bird's wings and roses filling most of the frame.

Neo-trad Botanical Swallow Bird Rose Rosebud Leaves Sketch

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 down by the oven, love, the bread's not ready and neither am I. Take the stool with the good leg. There, that's it.

Keep reading

My father had the bakery on Cable Lane when the river still froze in January. Every spring a swallow came down the flue, the same bird each year as far as anyone could tell, blue back and a red throat like a cut that wouldn't heal. He called her Mrs Thorne, after the woman next door who never once paid for a loaf on the day. She nested in the rafters above the proving racks, and at four in the morning she'd be out the window before the lamps were lit, cutting the grey sky into ribbons over the rooftops.

The year the wild roses came up along the churchyard wall, a man in a wet coat came in asking for a dozen cobs and stayed to talk about the sea. He had a sketch folded in his pocket, blue pencil and orange chalk, a bird with its wings thrown back over two open roses. He said he was taking it to a tattooist in the port who would put it on his arm, so he'd never be far from the land he'd left. My father laughed and gave him the cobs for nothing.

Come morning the nest was empty and the roses were frosted white. The swallow never came back down the flue. But on the shelf above the flour bins there's a feather from her left wing, blue as a gas flame, that she dropped the spring before she went. Take it if you want. Mind the oven door on your way out. The first batch always tells you whether the day's going to be kind.