Black and grey angel wings tattoo across the upper back of a person with their hair in a loose bun, shown in a black and white photo.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Angel wings on upper back

Back · Black and grey · Photo

A black and white photograph taken from behind shows a pair of angel wings tattooed between the shoulder blades. The feathers are shaded in soft grey and black, with the wings spread outward from the spine. The person's hair is gathered in a messy bun, a strap of a light top is visible, and part of another person's hair appears at the left edge, with a chandelier in the background.

Back Wing Angel wing Feather

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

Mind the third stair, it gives under you, and don't lean on that banister, it came off a steamer that went down off Hastings with half the crew still singing. Sit where I can see you. You've been staring up at that chandelier since you came in, so it's Mrs Pilling and her wings you'll get, and no arguing about it.

Keep reading

Mrs Pilling kept the Gull's Rest on Marine Parade, and in the winter of 1926 a girl came off the Dover train with one case and a bundle under her arm. The bundle was a pair of wings, six feet from tip to tip, made of gull feathers her brother had stitched onto a bent wire frame for a Whitsun pageant that never happened. Pale at the quills, darker at the tips, as if they'd been dipped in the tide. The girl wouldn't let anyone carry them. She wouldn't let them out of her sight either.

Room four had damp in the walls, so the wings went on the chandelier hook instead, hung from the brass arm where the candles had been. Every evening the wind came in off the sea through the loose sash and turned them, slow as a clock, and the feathers lightened and darkened with the lamplight until the room looked full of weather. Guests complained about the rustling. Then they stopped. A retired pier master told Mrs Pilling the room felt like someone standing just outside the door, waiting to be asked in. She didn't charge him for the extra night.

The brother came for them in March, thin, with no boots and a cough that rattled. He stood under the chandelier a long time and didn't ask for the wings. He asked whether she'd ever jumped from the top of the cliff steps, the way she'd promised him she would when they were children. She said no, she'd only ever thought about it. He nodded, reached up, and unhooked them himself. The feathers came away as grey dust on his palms, the way a fire leaves its soot, and the room was quiet for the first time in months.