Black and grey realism tattoo of a dreamcatcher with beaded strands and feathers on the side of a person's ribs.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Dreamcatcher and feathers on the ribs

Realism · Ribs · Black and grey · Photo

A dreamcatcher with a woven web, beads and a dangling feather sits on the side of the ribs, with a larger feather below it and curled wisps. The linework is fine and the feathers are shaded with soft grey gradients and darker accents for depth. The image is a close crop of bare skin, with a navel piercing and denim visible at the edges.

Realism Ribs Dreamcatcher Feather Bead Web

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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

You find the dreamcatcher in the window of Ada Pell's secondhand shop on Cross Lane, long after the last bus has gone, hanging by a fishing line from a cracked lamp. Its web is so fine it looks drawn in pencil, and the feathers below it are shaded like they might still be warm. Ada is pulling the shutter down when you press your face to the glass, and she sighs as if you have asked for something she has been meaning to get rid of.

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She tells you the old rule while she wraps it in yesterday's Evening Standard. The web catches the bad dreams and the good ones slip through the hole in the middle. The feathers are for whatever gets snagged and needs carrying away. You offer her four pounds, she says it is worth twelve, and you are too tired to argue, so you take it home in your coat pocket with the beads clicking against your keys.

It rains on the way back. The streetlights turn the web gold, and you notice the dark hole at its centre is the only part that does not catch the light. Under the railway bridge a stranger asks you the time and you tell him, and something in you loosens, as though you have been holding a rope tight all evening and only now let go of one end.

At home you hang it from the brass bedpost. The feather turns slowly in the draught from the window, and somewhere a van is already rattling milk bottles onto the step. You sleep straight through, and for once you are not sure whether the web kept anything or simply let you go.