Black and red tattoo of a split angel and devil wing design with a halo above and a devil tail below, placed on a person's upper back.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Angel and devil wings with tail on upper back

Back · Mixed · Photo

The tattoo shows a pair of wings with a halo above and a forked devil tail below. The left wing has spiky, flame-like black feathers edged with red, while the right wing is feathered and smoothly shaded in black and grey. The design is set on the upper back against plain skin, with a blue sheet visible at the bottom of the frame.

Back Wing Halo Angel Devil

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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

You have been asked to paint the same pair of wings twice, once in gold for the Methodist harvest float and once in soot black for the Palais sign, and Mrs Pargeter has already sent word that the second lot looks like something off a bus ticket. Pinned above the bench in the shed at Coldharbour Fen, your pencil sketch is curling at the corners. The halo sits above it, rubbed out and redrawn three times because it kept looking like a hoop of wire.

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Your brother Stan comes in with mud to his knees and a paper bag of chips he has not offered to share. He wants the left wing done in flames, spiky and licking, because that is how he sees the Palais boys who came out of the bar last Saturday. You tell him the left wing is the devil's and the right is the angel's, and the tail has to join them at the spine or the whole thing falls apart on the board.

He snorts and says nobody in the parish reads anything into a sign. So you mix the red, the thin wash you use for lettering the cheap tins, and let it bleed under the black edges until the feathers look scorched. Stan watches, chewing, and when you finally lift the brush he goes quiet, which from him is praise.

The float goes out on Saturday with gold angel wings on one side and the hooked tail trailing behind, and the vicar says nothing at all. The Palais sign hangs over the door until the rain takes the red off, and by the spring nobody remembers which half was whose. You keep the sketch, though, folded inside the lid of the paint tin, where it still has the pencil halo.