Colour tattoo on a thigh of two blue birds, a birdcage, red roses, a teacup, a pocket watch and a pair of rings in a neo-trad style.

Birds, birdcage and roses on a thigh

Neo-trad · Thigh · Colour · Photo

A thigh tattoo showing two blue and brown birds perched beside a black linework birdcage, with red roses on either side. Below sits a teacup with pale blue flowers, a pocket watch and a pair of rings on a tan background. Soft shading and bright colour give the piece a detailed, painterly finish.

Neo-trad Realism Thigh Bird Birdcage Rose Flower Teacup Pocket watch Clock Ring Swallow

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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

Dear Nell, the big top came down in Carlisle on Tuesday, and Mr Okonedo stood in the mud with his hat in his hands like a man at a funeral. I have the swallows now. You remember the pair Father bought off a boy in Penrith, the ones that could sing a bar of Pack Up Your Troubles if you held the cage just so? The cage is cracked along one bar, so I've wrapped it in your old blue headscarf to keep out the draught.

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The rings are in my coat pocket, the two brass ones from the knife-thrower's act, which we never once used because Gerald kept dropping them. The pocket watch on the nail stopped at twenty past four the night the lions went, and I haven't wound it. Mother's teacups went into a crate with roses painted on by a man in Wigan who wanted paying in ten-shilling notes. I'm bringing those too, though every saucer has cracked.

This morning the birds would not settle. They kept flying at the cage door as if someone had shut it on them, rather than the other way about. So I opened it on the wagon step and sat very still. The bigger one went straight up over the hedge towards the sea. The smaller one perched on my wrist for the length of a breath, then followed.

I'm not coming back to the ring. I'm going to Maryport, where there's a boarding house with a rose trellis and a landlady who doesn't ask questions. Write to me there, care of the post office, and tell me whether the swallows found their way to you. Love, Irene. P.S. The watch is in the tin with the rings. Don't let anyone wind it.