Tribal raven design

Blackwork · Black and grey · Flash

A solid black tribal-style raven in profile, facing right with its beak open. The bold shapes are cut through with grey linework that forms the feather patterns on the head, neck and wing. The design sits on a soft dark grey smoky background, and the composition fills most of the frame.

Blackwork Raven Bird Crow Tribal Wing Beak

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 ewes had been bunched against the far gate since first light, breath hanging over them like smoke, and Nell still hadn't found the lamb that had gone missing in the night. She checked the drystone walls twice, kicked through the frozen drift under the hay barn, and came back to the yard with her fingers aching inside her gloves.

Keep reading

Above the midden a raven sat on the ridge of the cart shed, black as a hole in the sky, its beak wide open as if it were arguing with the weather. Her grandfather had said ravens kept count. They counted the dead and the born, and they never forgot a debt. She had laughed at him once, years ago, and she did not laugh now.

She followed the bird's gaping beak to the orchard wall, where the snow had been trampled into a grey channel. The raven dropped off the roof with a rattle of wings and walked ahead of her, stopping every few yards to look back, the way a dog does. At the old ash tree it lifted its head and called, a harsh sound that rang off the frozen pond, and from the hollow under the roots came a thin, outraged bleat.

The lamb was wedged between the roots, legs folded, alive. Nell lifted it against her coat and felt its heart fluttering fast under the wool. When she looked up the raven had already gone, a single black feather turning slowly in the air where it had been. She tucked the feather into her pocket beside the lamb's rope and walked back to the gate, and she did not count the ewes.