Traditional-style colour tattoo of a phoenix with spread wings, running from the thigh down past the knee to the calf of a bare leg.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Colourful phoenix running down a leg

Traditional · Thigh · Colour · Photo

A large phoenix with outspread wings and a long, flowing tail covers the outer thigh and runs down past the knee onto the calf. The bird is outlined in bold black lines with solid shading, and its tail feathers taper into curling strands with eye-like markings. The bright palette of green, blue, yellow, orange and red is set against a plain dark background.

Traditional Thigh Calf Phoenix Bird Feather Tail feather Swirl Wing

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The vermilion had skinned over in the tin, so Ada Crane stirred it with a bent lolly stick and swore at the drizzle dripping off the lock gate. Her uncle Silas watched from the tiller, a flask of tea wedged between his knees, saying nothing about the way her hand shook when she reached for the fine brush.

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He wanted a phoenix on the cabin side, the way his own father had painted birds on the old Severn boats, but bigger and brighter, with wings spread wide enough to fill the whole panel. Ada drew the outline in pencil first, then the long tail that ran down past the painted roses and curled back on itself like weed in a slow current. For the feather eyes she used a peacock quill he had kept in a tobacco tin since before she was born, dabbing each one with turquoise and a bead of gold so it caught the light the way the real thing does.

By the time the bird was finished the rain had stopped and the river had crept a hand's width up the bank. Silas climbed aboard, studied the phoenix for a long while, then rapped twice on the hull as if it might answer. Next morning the cabin was dry and the river was back within its banks, and a single red tail feather lay on the towpath where the wind had dropped it, its painted eye still bright.