Black fine line tattoo of a feather on the upper chest dissolving into a flock of birds rising over the shoulder.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Feather and flying birds on the shoulder

Fine line · Chest · Black and grey · Photo

A shaded black feather sits on the upper chest below the collarbone, with its quill pointing downward and its fronds breaking into small dark birds that fly up and across towards the shoulder. The linework is fine and the feather has soft grey shading, while the birds are solid silhouettes. The image is a close, slightly angled photograph of the skin, with a thin necklace and a dark top at the edge of the frame.

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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

Brother Tacitus, the goose that Verax sold me this morning had a wing torn through, so I have cut the quills short and you must forgive the blots. The market by the bridge is full of men selling feathers they swear fell from the gods. I told them to take their gods to Verulamium. Your letter came with the carter, and I read it twice standing in the doorway while the rain ran off the thatch.

Keep reading

You ask whether I still keep the grey feather from the marsh heron you left on my bench the spring before you went north. I do. It lies in the box beside the pumice, and when the shop is quiet I take it out and lay it flat against the lamp. You once said a quill is only a bird that has not yet decided where to go. I thought that clever then and I think it foolish now, because I have watched the birds over the Tamesis all week and none of them seem to be deciding anything.

Yesterday at the river a flock came up off the mudflats, a hundred or more, and they rose so close to the water that for one breath the whole sky looked like a page being torn into strips. Every strip was black and every strip was moving. An old fisherman beside me spat and said that was the sky going to market. I laughed, and he did not, and then the flock folded itself over the wharf and was gone.

I have set the heron feather in the box with your seal. Write soon, and tell me whether the birds over your hills still turn left before the rain.

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