Solid black tribal-style phoenix design with outstretched wings and flowing flame-like tail on a white background, shown as a stencil-style drawing without a body placement.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Black tribal phoenix design

Blackwork · Black and grey · Flash

A bold black design of a phoenix or dragon-like bird with spread wings, a head turned to the right and a long tail that tapers into flame-like curls. The linework is thick and filled solid black with no grey shading, and the design sits centred on a plain white background. It is a flat, high-contrast drawing with no colour.

Blackwork Phoenix Dragon Wing Flame Bird

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 fire started in the cable trench under platform four, and by half eleven the whole down side of Hallam Cross station smelled of burnt rubber and wet ash. Nobody was hurt. Nobody was going anywhere either. I was the only porter left on, so I was sent along the platform with a hand lamp to tell the waiting passengers what they already knew.

Keep reading

Edith Marsh, who ran the signal box for thirty years, once told me that a steam engine's firebox was called the phoenix's nest, because the boilermen raked it out every night and it lit again every morning. I thought it was a daft thing to say. Standing at the end of the platform, I watched sparks climb off the trench smoke and bend back toward the footbridge in long curling tongues, and I understood she had meant it as a warning, not a joke.

A boy with a violin case asked me whether the train would burn. I said no, love, the fire was out. He said his nan always said everything burns, and what comes back is different. I didn't know what to tell him, so I said the 6:10 would be along when the line was clear, and he nodded as if that answered it.

The engine came in at first light, black with soot, its boiler relit by a man with a face like wet paper. I wrote the delay in the log in blue ink: Fire out. Line clear. Something rising.