Traditional style colour tattoo of a feather with green leaves, a pink flower and a black swirl on the forearm.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Colourful feather on forearm

Traditional · Forearm · Colour · Photo

A large feather runs diagonally along the forearm, filled with teal, blue, red and orange and finished with pink dot stippling. Bold black outlines define the quill and barbs, and a black scrolling line curls near the base. Green leaves and a small pink flower sit beside the feather, set against a teal cloth background.

Traditional Forearm Feather Leaves Flower Swirl Quill

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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 last customer of the night wanted a letter written in a hand that wouldn't shake, so Nell Garrow fetched the peacock quill from the tin under the counter before the kettle had even boiled. The shop sat at the bottom of Tallow Steps in Harwick, where the gaslamps had been swapped for sodium bulbs that turned everything the colour of weak tea. She trimmed the barbs with her thumbnail, the way her father had taught her, and set the nib to a sheet of cream paper.

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The man called himself Ansel and said he had not written to his brother in eleven years. He spoke slowly, as if each word had to be carried up stairs. Nell dipped the quill into a pot of teal ink she mixed herself, and the light from the lamp caught the feather so the blue and green seemed to move on their own. Red ran along the tip where the old dye had bled. Ansel watched the nib rather than her face, and she understood he was afraid of being read too quickly.

Halfway down the page he stopped and asked her to keep the letter rather than post it. He wanted it written, not sent, he said, because writing it had been the hard part and sending it would only be the easy part going wrong. Nell folded the sheet in three and slid it into the drawer marked UNCLAIMED, beside a dozen others that had waited for courage longer than they had waited for stamps.

When he had gone, the rain had started on the glass and the potted fern by the door was dripping onto the step. Nell turned the quill over in her hand, admiring the curl at its base where the stem met the paper. She left it on the counter for morning, still unwashed, its ink drying in fine, stubborn lines.