Shaded black and grey dreamcatcher tattoo with feathers and small teal beads across the outer thigh and hip.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Dreamcatcher and feathers on a thigh

Realism · Thigh · Mixed · Photo

A large dreamcatcher with a fine woven web sits on the outer thigh, with several shaded feathers hanging from its left side and a sweeping curved line below. The feathers are rendered in soft grey shading with darker tips, while the web and hoop use crisp, delicate linework. Small teal beads along the strands add the only colour to an otherwise grey design, and a white earbud cable and dark fabric appear at the top edge.

Realism Thigh Dreamcatcher Feather Bead Web Hoop

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 snow had sealed the Hollin Gate Inn since Tuesday, and by the third night the only guest still ringing the bell was Mrs Abernethy in room four. She wanted her hot water bottle refilled every hour and her curtains left open so she could watch the lamp on the moor road. I was nineteen and the night porter because nobody else would take the shift for three pounds and a bed beside the boiler.

Keep reading

Mrs Abernethy kept a hoop of willow on her windowsill, wound with grey thread, hung with grey feathers and strung with small turquoise beads that caught the lamplight. She said her sister had made it before the war, and that the web was meant to catch bad dreams and let the good ones slip through the gaps. I told her it sounded like a fishing net. She laughed until she coughed, and then she asked me to stop at the window on my rounds and tell her whether the lamp was still lit.

On the fourth night the lamp went out at two. I climbed up with the poker and found her sitting upright, the hoop in her lap, picking at a single feather that had come loose. She asked if I thought the lamp had simply gone to sleep. I said I supposed so. She handed me the hoop and told me to hang it where the draught came through, so I tied it under the eaves above the boiler flue, where the cold could fall through the web without troubling anyone.

The thaw came on the Sunday. The coach rattled up the valley on its chains, and Mrs Abernethy went down the road in her good coat without her hoop. I found it still hanging in the eaves when I climbed up to clear the soot, and I left it there. Some nights, when the boiler ticks, I look up at the beads catching the light and think of her going out into the first sun, never once looking back at the lamp.