Raven tattoo meaning, ideas and designs

Where the raven meaning comes from

Huginn and Muninn are named in the Poetic Edda and in Snorri's Prose Edda, sitting on Odin's shoulders and flying out each day to bring back what they have seen. Their names translate as thought and memory, and Odin carries raven names of his own. That pairing is why ravens are so often tattooed in twos, one on each shoulder or one on each side of a chest piece.

Poe's poem is the other source and it does most of the modern work. A raven arrives at midnight, perches, and answers every question with the same word. People tattoo it for grief, for a memory that will not go, and for the mood rather than the story. If the poem is your reason, a perching pose with a single word in lettering is the version that reads clearly.

Readings and the design each one points at

• Thought and memory, from Odin's two ravens, usually drawn as a pair
• Grief that will not leave, from Poe, usually a single perching bird
• Battle and the Morrigan, from Irish texts, often with Celtic knotwork
• Intelligence and problem solving, which is a modern reading from the actual bird

Solid black, or feathers

Everything on this page comes back to one choice. A solid black raven is a shape, it reads from across a room, and it will look the same in thirty years. A feathered raven has internal structure, looks alive, and depends on bare skin gaps that are the first casualty of spreading ink. Most artists who do a lot of birds will push you toward solid black at small sizes and feathers above 15 cm, which is sound advice.

If you want feathers, the detail to insist on is spacing. Any two lines inside the bird need at least 2 mm between them, and feather groups should be drawn as groups with real black separating the rows rather than as individual feathers. A grey wash raven is the third option: black only in the primaries and the bill, soft grey through the body. It looks best in the first year and it is the one most likely to want a touch up at year eight.

Pose, size and placement

A perching raven in three quarter view with the bill in profile is the most legible pose, because the bill and the tail both show. It is a compact upright shape, which suits the outer forearm, the bicep, the back of the calf and the shoulder blade. A flying raven with wings open is wide, so it goes across the sternum, under the collarbones, over a shoulder blade or along the ribs.

A raven's head alone, bill open, works well at 8 to 10 cm on the inner forearm and skips the feather problem entirely. Two ravens facing each other across the sternum or on either side of the spine is the Norse layout, and it needs both birds drawn at the same weight or the pair looks accidental. A row of three small flying ravens down the spine is the other common request, and it works because the shape repeats.

Styles, cost and what goes wrong

Blackwork is the most reliable and the cheapest. Etching style, built from parallel hatching like an old engraving, suits the subject and comes with a known fate: the lines spread, the bird goes darker, and the composition still holds. Viking and Celtic styles bring knotwork, which works well with a pair. Black and grey realism gives you the best looking raven in year one and the most maintenance after that.

A 10 cm blackwork raven is usually $150 to $300. A 20 cm realistic perching raven with feather detail runs $500 to $1,000 in one long sitting. The failures are consistent: hairline feather lines inside a dark body, white ink added to the bill and the eye that yellows within three years, and a bird drawn so generically that nobody can tell whether it is a raven or a crow.