Traditional style tattoo of a black raven with red roses and a beaded arc on the upper arm and shoulder of a person in a black top.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Traditional raven and red roses on upper arm

Traditional · Upper arm · Mixed · Photo

A large traditional style tattoo shows a black and grey raven in profile, with scale-like feather detailing and small orange and red accents on the wing. Two red roses with dark green leaves frame the bird, and a row of orange beads arcs behind its head above a soft grey circle. The tattoo wraps across the upper arm and shoulder, with bold black outlines and solid fills against a plain skin background.

Traditional Upper arm Shoulder Raven Bird Rose Bead Moon Leaves

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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 raven came aboard at Scarborough with a rope burn on one leg and opinions about everything. You are cook on the Margaret Ann, so the galley is yours, and by the second night out the bird has decided it belongs to him. He perches on the rail above the range and watches you peel potatoes, head cocked, one amber eye measuring the gap between your knife and the bucket of scraps.

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The skipper calls him bad luck. The deckhands tie a loop of orange wool to his perch for good weather, and he eats it. You tell them he is only a bird. Then the glass drops past midnight and the swell comes up under the hull like something breathing, and you find yourself turning the amber beads round your neck, the ones your mother strung before you went to sea. The raven shifts on the rail and says nothing, which is more than the wind is doing.

By dawn the galley is awash with brine and the stove has gone out. You are on your knees with a tin of matches when the bird drops onto the table beside you and takes hold of your sleeve, pulling, until you follow him up the ladder into a sky the colour of wet slate. Low over the cliffs the moon hangs pale and still lit, and beneath it the sea has begun to lie flat.

By noon the skipper swears the calm had nothing to do with a bird. The deckhands are less sure. You say nothing. The raven is back on the rail with a red paper rose caught in his beak, and he drops it at your feet as though it were owed.