Close-up of a fine line black and grey feather tattoo on the side of a neck, just behind the ear.

Feather tattoo on the neck behind the ear

Fine line · Neck · Black and grey · Photo

A single feather runs diagonally down the side of the neck, tapering from a rounded top to a fine point. The linework is delicate, with fine strokes marking the barbs and a central shaft, and soft grey shading gives the quill some depth. The background is pale skin, dark hair at the right and the edge of an ear at the upper left, with the tattoo placed near the centre of the frame.

Fine line Neck Feather

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 heron lifted off the gunwale as Eli Varley threw the bow line, and a single grey feather came down slow as a leaf, catching on the wet cabin roof of the Constance Mary just above the chimney. He let it lie. The reach below Hollin Lock was running high and brown after a week of rain, and there was no time for sentiment with the lock-keeper already shouting about the gate.

Keep reading

By the time they had the barge tied at Ferry Staithe, the light had gone the colour of weak tea. His daughter Nell came out with the frying pan and a tin of corned beef, and she saw the feather before he did. She peeled it off with two fingers and held it to the lamp, turning the quill so the fine barbs caught the light, each one separate, like a comb with all its teeth still in.

"That's no moorhen's," she said. "Herons keep their feathers in powder. This one's been combed." She had been reading her grandmother's bird book all winter and wanted everyone to know it. Eli said nothing. He had a rule about birds on the boat, which was that they did not come aboard unless they were mending the roof. Nell pinned the feather inside the cupboard door, where the damp could not get at it.

Three locks later, when the Constance Mary came out onto the wide water at dawn, Eli opened the cupboard and found the feather gone. In its place, held down on the tiller by a single drop of candle wax, lay a larger one, darker and softer at the base, with a note in pencil: Gone to see the heron. Back by the next lock. He stood with his palm on the tiller and let the barge drift, because for once there was nothing downstream he needed to reach first.