Realistic colour tattoo of a feather fading into a flock of black birds, placed on the side of the ribs.

Colourful feather with flying birds on ribs

Realism · Ribs · Mixed · Photo

A large feather runs diagonally down the side of the torso, shaded in red, green, blue and yellow, with its quill clearly defined. Black silhouetted birds rise from the upper part of the feather, with a soft grey smoky fade where the feather breaks apart. The bright colour of the feather contrasts with the solid black birds against the plain skin.

Realism Ribs Feather Bird Flock

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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

Mind the puddles and come in under the awning, the rain's not finished with us yet. Sit on that crate, love, it's sturdier than it looks. This is about Ada Sallow, who kept a grey parrot called Tobin in the back room of the fish shop on Gull Lane. Tobin could recite the shipping forecast in full, and nobody had ever taught him. Then the winter the Cormorant went down off Seaham, he went quiet, and Ada sat by his cage for a week without going to bed. On the eighth morning he dropped a feather onto her apron, long and striped red at the tip, green down the middle, blue at the foot, as if someone had painted a sunset on it in a hurry.

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She pinned it to the window frame to keep it dry, and that was her mistake. The next wet morning the feather shivered, and then it wasn't one feather at all but a whole flock of small black birds, lifting off the vane and crossing the glass. They flew out over the harbour wall, straight for the lighthouse, and Ada swore she heard Tobin's voice in the middle of them, reading out the wind for the boats that were still at sea.

Now here's the part people argue about. The feather never came apart completely. The quill stayed on the sill, bare and grey as a bone, and nobody in that shop would ever throw it out. Every time it rains on Gull Lane, somebody's kettle starts whistling the forecast. Right, who wants a bag of cockles before they're gone?