Tribal owl with spread wing design
Blackwork · Black and grey · Flash
A bold owl in a tribal style, with heavy black shapes forming the body, staring eyes, ear tufts and clawed feet. The wing is filled with swirling curls and sweeping stripes, while the body uses flowing vertical lines. The design is shown in solid black ink on white with no body part visible.
Find an artist for thisTake 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 reunion was held in the Cutter Street hall the year the roof began to leak, and the owl came in with the rain. Nobody had invited it. It sat on the beam above the trestle tables with its wings folded like a closed umbrella, watching the people who had once sat at desks beneath it.
Keep reading
Old Mrs Alder, who had taught them all long vowels and short tempers, said it was the same owl that had watched the school in her day, and that it kept a list. Every child who had ever lied to a teacher, it remembered. Harold Pike laughed and bought a round of lemonade. The owl did not blink.
When the speeches ran out, the owl spread its wing across the hall, and the light from the bulbs ran along its curls like water along a gutter. Each stripe was a year. Each swirl was a name. Then it began to read them aloud in a voice like a rusted gate, and every person in the room found they had to stand up and say what they had owed.
Harold went first. He said he had broken the Pike girl's slate in the spring of the flood and blamed the new boy. The owl folded its wing away. It looked at the room for a long while and said nothing else, and nobody there had ever heard an owl sound so pleased to be told the truth. Mrs Alder sat down very quietly and said the roof could wait until morning.
More like this
From the plentytattoo archive, uploaded by a user. Is this your work? Ask for credit or removal.