Pencil sketch of three dreamcatchers hung with beads and layered feathers, shaded in black and grey on cream paper.

Dreamcatchers and feathers pencil sketch

Black and grey · Flash

The drawing shows a large dreamcatcher at the top with two smaller hoops below it, each with fine radiating webs, and a small hoop hanging lower down. Layered feathers and beaded strands fill the composition, with trailing feather tips at the bottom. The work uses soft graphite shading in black and grey, with a clean outline on the feathers and hoops.

Dreamcatcher Feather Bead 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

Mab had mended nets on the Porthgwidden slip for forty years, and she could tell a sound knot from a lazy one with her eyes shut. The new boy, Tomas, could not. He kept tying his reef knots like a man signing a cheque he didn't trust, and every morning she unpicked them while the gulls argued over the bait boxes.

Keep reading

One March she found him at the back of the net loft with a coil of old lobster-pot rope, a bent hoop of ash he had steamed over the paraffin stove, and a grey heap of gull feathers he'd been paid to clear from the quay. He was webbing the hoop the way she webbed her nets, one line that never broke, drawing each loop tight against the last until the rings opened into a star. 'It's for the boathouse wall,' he said, not looking up. 'To catch what comes in.'

She meant to laugh at him, but the web was true. Every knot sat square, and the rings wound inward like the water going down the drain at the slip. She took the loose end between finger and thumb and tied off the last loop herself, with the knot her mother had taught her.

That night the wind came off the bay hard enough to tear the tarpaulins loose. In the morning the boathouse door stood open and the nets were all still hanging dry. The hoop turned slowly from the rafter, its feathers lifting and settling, and the web had caught nothing but light. Tomas swore the sea had tried the loft and given up. Mab said nothing, and went to fetch her needle.