Black and grey dreamcatcher tattoo with pink ribbons and two feathers on the upper back of a person with reddish-brown hair.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Dreamcatcher with feathers on upper back

Realism · Back · Mixed · Photo

A shaded dreamcatcher hangs centrally on the upper back, with a star-shaped web of fine lines inside a braided ring, a vertical stick, and two dangling feathers with small beads. Soft grey shading gives the feathers and ring volume, and thin pink ribbons wrap the stick and trail to the left. The tattoo sits in the middle of a plain, evenly lit back, with only the top of the head and hair visible.

Realism Back Dreamcatcher Feather Ribbon Bead Star Web

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

Orla Venn had strung nineteen hoops along the cold deck of Harrow Station's sleep wards, and every one of them had caught something. Her mentor, old Teodor, said the trick was the star at the centre: five lines that never crossed the same point twice, so a dream could wander in but not find its way back out before morning. Orla had never believed him until the night the ward lights went amber and a child in bed nine began to cry in a language no one aboard spoke.

Keep reading

She crossed the ward with a length of pink ribbon knotted at her wrist. It was the last spool from Earth, bought with two years of rations, and she had promised her sister she would not waste it. The bead on the stick swung as the air recyclers breathed. Bed nine's sleeper was thrashing, and the feathers on the hoop above him stirred though no vent was open. Orla pressed her palm to the cool metal and felt the thread pull taut, like a line taking a fish.

She drew the dream out slowly, the way Teodor had taught her, winding the loose images through the web one by one: a blue field, a dog with a torn ear, a green door left ajar. The star held them. When the last thread went slack, the child breathed evenly and the feathers fell still.

Orla tied the ribbon off around the stick, loosely enough to undo. In the morning she would have to decide whether to give the dream back to the boy or keep it for the archive, and she suspected that choice would be harder than the catching. For now she sat on the cold floor and watched the silver lines hold the amber light, waiting for the ward to forget it had ever been afraid.