Black and grey realism tattoo of a shaded feather that breaks up into a flock of flying birds on skin.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Feather dissolving into flying birds

Realism · Other · Black and grey · Photo

The tattoo shows a large feather curving up from the lower left, its barbs shaded with soft grey gradients and highlights. Towards the top right, the feather fragments into a loose cluster of dark bird silhouettes in flight. The image is greyscale, with the design set against plain, lightly textured skin.

Realism Other Feather Bird Flock Flight

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 feather is still caught on the wire when you come back up Mill Lane with the bread under your arm, a long grey quill lifting in the wind as if it hasn't yet heard the news. Over the chapel roof the Sutton birds are wheeling, eleven of them, then fourteen, then a loose handful that peels off and scatters towards the gasworks. Mr Ackroyd has been standing in his yard for an hour with his cap in his hands.

Keep reading

He doesn't turn when you reach the gate. He says the racers were let go at six for the Carlisle run, and the telegram from the club came at nine to say none had arrived, and he has been counting the sky since. You know what he's counting. Two of his birds were his late wife's, and she named them after hymns, and you once heard her singing the verses to them through the loft door.

You set the bread down on the step. The wind drops for a moment and the flock turns all at once, a single dark sleeve folding over the rooftops, and then it breaks apart into separate wings, each one tipping off into its own piece of the morning. Ackroyd lifts his cap and lets the wind have it. You pick up the feather, its ribs soft as wet bark, and you put it in his hand.

'They're not lost,' you tell him, though you aren't sure. 'They're just going on ahead.' He folds the quill into his breast pocket and nods towards the fields, where the last of them are dropping into the hedgerow one by one, and the two of you stand there until the sky is empty and blue and the bread goes soft on the step.