Close-up photograph of a small black and grey tattoo of two angel wings and a halo on pale skin.

Angel wings and halo tattoo

Black and grey · Photo

The tattoo shows a pair of angel wings with a halo above them, drawn in bold black outlines. The feathers have soft grey shading and light, unshaded areas, giving the wings some depth. The design sits on pale, pinkish skin, and the warm, close-up framing fills the image with the tattoo.

Angel Wing Halo

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 bronze lad had waited three weeks for his wings when the master sent me up the scaffold with a basket of goose quills and a bad temper. Nobody in the workshop thought a messenger ought to be given wings at all, but the harbour shrine had paid in good silver, and silver outvotes doubt every time. I was the one who knew how to make a thing that looked as though it might lift off the plinth.

Keep reading

I trimmed each quill and scraped the spine thin until it bent like a reed. Then I bound them with waxed thread to a frame of ash, the longest feathers at the tips, the short ones curling up over the shoulder. For the grey I held the inner feathers over a lamp until their edges browned, so that the light would fall into the shadows the way the sculptor wanted. The halo was an old copper ring from a broken lamp, hammered round and hung on a wire above the boy's head. It was the only part I was proud of.

The first hard wind off the water came the morning we fixed them on. The left wing lifted clean off its pin, tumbled over the quay and dropped into the harbour like a gull shot from the sky. I ran down the steps in my apron. A fishergirl called Iphis was already leaning out from her boat with a net, and she handed the feather back to me dripping, the charred tip still black, and said it was the first thing she had ever seen fly that was not a bird.

I rebuilt the wing lighter that week, with fewer quills and more gaps for the wind to pass through. When the next gale came the copper ring rang softly against the bronze shoulder, and the boy stood there with his arms out, looking as though he had somewhere urgent to be. The priest paid me less than he had promised. I kept the charred feather in my pocket, and I still think about it when the wind is in from the sea.