Colour tattoo of a small bird with spread wings in green, blue and black splashes, on the upper back.

Bird in flight on upper back

Back · Colour · Photo

A small bird with outstretched wings is tattooed on the upper back, with its head and body in dark ink and its wings made of loose, feathery strokes. The linework is loose and painterly, with the wings dissolving into splashes and drips. Teal, green and blue dominate, with black accents and touches of pink, set against pale skin.

Back Bird Wing Splatter Dot

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

Shift up and mind the kettle, the stove on this boat has a temper worse than a lock gate. I'll tell you about the sparrow that lived in the paint locker of the Hester Jane, the summer the Oxford cut ran green as bottle glass.

Keep reading

Old Tobias Reeve kept his pots of colour under the tarpaulin, teal and moss and a blue like a kingfisher's back, and he swore the sparrow knew his brushes better than he did. Every dawn it sat on the gunwale and watched him mix. One morning the lid came off the green tin in a gust, and the whole cabin roof went splashed. Tobias cursed until the lock-keeper's dog barked back at him.

The bird took to it. When the wind got up off the water it would dive into the spill and come out shaking, every feather dripping colour, and fly along the towpath with the willows caught in its wings. Children on the bank swore it was painting the hedgerows as it went. By August there was a sparrow-shaped stain of green hanging over Iffley, and nobody could tell you where the paint stopped and the bird began.

Tobias died in the frost that winter, and the Hester Jane went to scrap. The tin is in my cupboard still, lid rusted on. Last spring I prised it open and found one small feather stuck to the rim, wet as the day it fell. Put your hand flat on the table and feel how the river hums. That's the bird, keeping time.