Colour tattoo of a dreamcatcher with shaded black and grey feathers and a rainbow splash behind it, on the lower leg above the ankle.

Dreamcatcher with watercolour splashes on an ankle

Ankle · Mixed · Photo

A dreamcatcher with a beaded hoop, fine woven web and a jewel-like centre sits above three shaded feathers hung on beaded cords. Soft pink, orange, blue and green splashes spread behind the hoop and feathers, and the photograph is taken straight on against a dark background.

Ankle Dreamcatcher Feather Web Bead Splash 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 net came over the gunwale heavy with cod and a snarl of old rope, and Davey swore at it the way he swore at everything before the tea was poured. I took the knife from my belt and started on the knot nearest the hoop, the way Mam had taught me in the net loft at Scarborough, where the tarred twine hung in long brown curtains and smelt of the sea before the sea ever touched it.

Keep reading

Mam mended nets for the fleet for thirty years. She used to say a good web catches what it's meant to and lets the small things slip through, and that the trick was knowing which was which before the mesh closed. I never understood her until I watched a gannet fold itself into the water and come up with nothing, and I thought of the fish that had gone past it, untouched, into the grey.

By the time we cleared the harbour wall the sky had gone the colour of a bruise healing, pink first, then orange, bleeding into a blue that looked wet. Davey lit a cigarette and told me the hoop on the wheelhouse was bad luck, that nothing good came of charms on a working boat. I said nothing. I had made it from willow and waxed cord the night before Dad's last trip, and I had hung it where he could see it.

We came home that evening with a light hold and the feathers still dry and grey on the rail. I unpicked one and kept it in my pocket. When Davey asked what for, I told him it was for the catch, and he laughed and let me have it.