Black and grey realistic feather tattoo with small flying bird silhouettes on the side of the torso, above the waistband.

Feather with birds on the side of the torso

Realism · Other · Black and grey · Photo

A shaded black and grey feather sits diagonally on the side of the torso, with a fine central shaft and soft barbs. Several small bird silhouettes trail upward from its tip toward the ribs. The photograph is a close, slightly warm-toned crop showing a navel piercing and the top of a dark waistband.

Realism Other Feather Bird Silhouette

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 officer at the Lavrovo post turned my passport over twice, as if the photograph might have changed its mind about me on the drive. Beyond the glass the wire fence ran off into cut stubble, and above it a line of swallows kept hopping across the frontier from one side to the other, indifferent to both flags painted on the barrier.

Keep reading

In my coat pocket was a grey flight feather from the loft my brother kept above the bakery in Sorin. When we were children he told me a feather always points the way its bird was last heading, and that if you held it still long enough you could follow it home. I didn't believe him. I had carried it across two countries anyway, and it had worn a soft place into the lining.

"Anything to declare?" the officer asked. I said no. He emptied my bag onto the steel counter and found the feather among the receipts. He held it up to the window light, where the barbs separated into fine dark threads, and frowned at it as though it were a forged document. "Birds don't need papers," he said finally, and pushed it back across the counter. "I'd rather not be the one to tell them."

Outside, the swallows lifted off the wire all at once and streamed out over the stubble in the direction the feather had been pointing. I stood by the kerb and took it out and let it go. The wind carried it a few yards, turned it once, and dropped it into the field. Then I set off after the birds on foot.