Close photo of a fine line feather tattoo with soft pink, blue and orange wash on the upper chest near the shoulder.

Feather with pastel wash on upper chest

Fine line · Chest · Mixed · Photo

A single feather runs diagonally across the upper chest, drawn with fine black outline and grey shading along its barbs. The upper part of the feather fades into a soft watercolour-style wash of pink, blue, yellow and orange. The pale skin and grey background keep the focus on the tattoo, which is cropped at the shoulder and collarbone.

Fine line Chest Feather Watercolour wash

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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

You break the skin of ice on the horse trough with the back of the hoe, because the mare won't drink from anything that tastes of iron. The yard is still grey at half six, and the geese stand in a row along the wall like men waiting for a bus. Your breath hangs in front of you and the dog runs circles through it.

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Mr Pennock told you in October that the grey gander would go before Christmas, and you believed him until the morning he didn't. Instead the gander stood at the gate with his wings half open, and a single long feather came loose on the wind. It drifted over the stubble and snagged on the top wire, where it stayed, shivering, while you walked over with the hoe still in your hand.

Up close it was grey at the spine and soft at the edges, but the sun was coming up behind the hedge, and the tip took the colour of it: a blush of pink, then a thread of blue, then a smear of yellow where the frost had melted off the wire. You stood there longer than the trough needed. Nobody had ever told you a goose could hold weather like that.

You pulled it free, folded it into your coat pocket, and went back to the mare. By the time the ice was broken the colour had gone grey again, but you could still feel it there, the way a kettle keeps its heat long after the stove is out. Mr Pennock never asked about the gander. That Christmas he bought a bird from the Co-op, and you kept the feather in the tin with the spare baling twine.