Black and grey fine line tattoo of three swallows in flight, soft shaded, on the side of the ribs.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Three swallows in flight on the side

Fine line · Ribs · Black and grey · Photo

Three small swallows in flight are tattooed across smooth skin, each with a dark body and long, feathered wings drawn in fine, tapering strokes. The wings fade softly into lighter grey toward their tips, while the bodies are darker and more solid. The birds are spaced diagonally down the frame, leaving open skin between them for a light, airy composition.

Fine line Ribs Swallow Bird Wing Flight

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

Hush now, and pass the kettle, because this story is longer than my knees. The swallows came over the Dunmere flats in the third summer after the sea took the causeway. There were three of them, dark-bodied and quick, and they flew the way nobody flew any more, dipping low over the drowned hedgerows, then tilting up as if the air had a hand beneath them.

Keep reading

Old Halvard Pike kept the lighthouse at Scarrow then, and he had a rule: any bird that comes to your rail is a bird you write down. So he kept a slate by the lamp room door and chalked each one he saw. Two on the first week. A third came on the ninth day, its tail forked like a pair of shears, and it sat on the iron rail until the lamp was lit. By the time Halvard had found the chalk, it was gone.

Ask the children what happened next and they'll tell you the birds carried messages from the mainland. That's not how it went. The birds carried nothing but themselves. Halvard's daughter, Wren, watched them skim the grey water and swore they were searching for somewhere to land. She believed the sea was only a long way they had to cross, and she said so every evening while she scrubbed the salt from the windows.

On the last morning of that summer, Halvard took the slate down and wiped it clean with his sleeve, slow as the tide going out. Wren asked him why. He looked at the empty sky over the flats, where the three of them were already dropping toward the spray and climbing again, their wings thinning to nothing at the tips. Then he said, there, nobody has to count what is leaving.