Black ink flash design of three crows in square frames, each in a different pose, with loose ink spots and drips between them.

Three crows in square frames with ink splatter

Black and grey · Flash

Three black crows sit in square outlines, one perched, one in mid-flight with wings spread, and one perched facing away. The birds are rendered as solid silhouettes with ragged, brushed edges, and loose ink droplets trail down the right side of the sheet. The design is entirely in black ink on white paper, arranged vertically down the page.

Crow Raven Bird Silhouette Ink splatter

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

The crows come to the rock the week the boat fails to arrive. You count them from the keeper's kitchen window: two on the wall, one on the gatepost, and a fourth you decide is only the shadow of the pump. Your father used to say a crow that sits still is thinking and a crow that leaves has made up its mind. You have never known which kind yours are.

Keep reading

On the ninth day you take the ink jar from the drawer where he kept the tide tables and sit down with the back of an old chart. Each bird wants a frame, or it will not stay put on the page. You box the first one on the wall, perched and watchful. You box the third, which faces away as if it has heard a bell on the mainland. The ink runs thick in the cold, and where your hand shakes the nib spits black drops down the paper like rain starting on a slate roof. The fourth crow, the one with its wings thrown wide, refuses the square. It keeps breaking out of the lines and you let it.

The boat comes that evening, but nobody is aboard. There is only a crate of ink and a folded note in your father's hand: count them, then let one go. You open the window. The winged one drops off the sill and rides the wind out over the grey water, leaving a spatter of dark on the slate as it goes. The two on the wall do not move. You stand there with the chart in your hands until the light goes, and when you finally look down, the bird on the gatepost has turned round to watch you.