Colourful owl tattoo on the forearm in a soft watercolour-style wash of purple, pink, yellow and orange with dark shaded edges.

Watercolour-style owl on a forearm

Forearm · Colour · Photo

A small owl sits side-on with its head turned, its round face and closed eye picked out in pale yellow and cream. The body and wings are built from loose, blended washes of purple, pink, orange and yellow, with dark blue-black shading along the top of the head and wing edges. The owl is centred on the skin with plenty of empty space around it.

Forearm Owl Bird Feather

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The snow had sealed the pass for nine days when the owl came down the chimney of the Hollin Inn and settled on the back of the settle as if it had paid for the room. Marta Greave swept the ash around it and did not shoo it out. Nobody at Hollin ever shooed anything that had come in out of the weather, and the owl was small enough to hold in two hands, round-faced and patient, with one eye always shut.

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Its colours were strange. When the logs burned hot the feathers went violet at the edges, and at first light they blushed pink along the wing, and when the lamp was lit they turned the yellow of new butter. Marta's husband Tobias said it was only the firelight. Marta said firelight did not make a bird look sorry for itself, and that was the trouble with it.

On the ninth night a man knocked, wet to the bone, asking for a bed and a stable for his horse. He gave his name as Ansel Crowe and his money as good silver. The owl lifted its head. Its open eye went dark blue at the rim, the colour of a bruise, and the black along its wings spread like spilt ink. Marta saw it and said the attic was full, and the man went back into the snow with his horse. In the morning the sheriff's men came up the valley looking for a purse cut from a carter at the top of the pass.

When the thaw came the owl flew up the flue without a sound, and on the hearthstone lay one yellow feather. Marta kept it in the tin with her wedding ring and never once lit the fire without looking to see whether the owl had come back.