Pencil drawing of a woman with birds in her flowing hair, stitched lips and shaded eyes, offered as a neo-traditional tattoo design.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Woman with birds in flowing hair

Neo-trad · Black and grey · Flash

A shaded pencil drawing of a woman's head and shoulders, with long hair swept around her face. Two small birds perch in the hair, one on top of the head and one at the left side, and a few curling swirls decorate the cheek and eye. The linework is soft and sketchy in grey tones on a pale background, with stitch marks drawn across the lips.

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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

Dear Tobias, the swifts came back to the tower roof again this morning, the grey ones with the forked tails, and they were carrying thread. I counted nine before I stopped counting. Mother says they are nesting in the old mill gutters, but I think they have been stealing from the sail lofts down by the quay, where the sewing machines still run on tide power.

Keep reading

You asked in your last letter whether the Council has finally sealed the lower gate. It has. They sealed it with a seam, which is how the engineers talk now. Every window on Grebe Street has a line of black cord stitched across its sash, and nobody is allowed to speak of the men who went down the sluice in March. Mrs Ashdown says the cord is only for the damp. I have stopped arguing with her, since she is the only one left who still hums when she works.

Last night one of the swifts landed on my windowsill and dropped a curl of pale hair, long as a rope, tied with a knot I recognised from your fishing lines. I unpicked it with my teeth, as you taught me, and inside was a folded scrap with one word on it: come. I am not going to the mill. I am going up to the roof with the scissors and the spare cord, and I will let the birds take whatever they can carry.

If you do not hear from me by the spring tide, look for the swallow with the broken wing. It will be the one wearing my hair.

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