Pencil sketch of a small bird with outstretched wings and feathered detail, drawn in red and blue coloured pencil on cream paper, shown as a possible tattoo design.

Bird with spread wings pencil sketch

Colour · Flash

A small bird stands with both wings spread wide, drawn in loose blue and reddish-brown coloured pencil on cream paper. The body is shaded with scale-like rows of feathers, and the wing feathers are built up with directional hatching and fine stray strokes. The composition fills most of the frame with the bird centred, with lighter open paper around the edges.

Bird Wing Feather Sketch Claw

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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

The ovens had been ticking for twenty minutes when the bird came in through the coal-hole vent, and Nell Garside nearly dropped the tray of tins. It was no bigger than her fist, the colour of toasted crust with blue-grey edges on its wings, and it landed on the proving rack as though it had been booked in. Then it spread both wings wide over the rows of dough, a small brown cross against the flour dust, and held still.

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'You're not my bread,' she told it. The radio on the windowsill was still murmuring the shipping forecast, and she found herself reciting the names under her breath, Dogger, Fisher, Viking, as if the bird needed them. It cocked its head at her. Its feet, when she looked properly, were grey and curled like the end of a violin scroll, gripping the wooden slat as if it had weathered worse than a bakery.

Her husband had always said the first hour belonged to the dough and nobody else. She had argued with him about that for thirty-one years and lost most of the arguments. Now she stood with flour on her forearms and let the clock tick past half four, let the bird keep its wings out like a sign hung over the trays, and thought that nothing rises properly without somebody keeping it warm.

At ten to five the sky over the car park went the colour of weak milk. The bird folded itself, shook loose a few feathers that drifted down onto the flour, and went out through the top window in one clean stroke. Nell slashed each loaf with the blade, and found a single blue-grey feather caught in the cloth. She tucked it behind the till, where she could see it all day.