Pencil drawing of a feathered serpent design in the style of Mesoamerican stone carving, with a detailed head and a coiled, segmented body on a pale background.

Feathered serpent design in pencil

Black and grey · Flash

A pencil drawing of a feathered serpent, with its head at the top showing an open jaw, layered headdress feathers and a carved-looking band of scrolled detail. The body coils down the right and into a tail at the lower left, with each segment shaded to suggest raised relief. The work is in graphite tones on a pale, textured paper, with no colour.

Serpent Feather Headdress Scroll

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

Dear Tomas,

Keep reading

The crate came off the Halden boat on Tuesday with the customs seal already broken, so Mr Pryce had the dockers carry it straight into the net store and nobody has opened it since. It is the length of a rowing skiff and heavier than anything we have ever lifted. Stencilled on the side in faded paint is a word I cannot read, and under it a number, 14, which seems to be the only thing about it everyone agrees on.

I went down this morning with a torch because the store has no window. When I pulled the sacking back from the top I saw the head first: a stone jaw open wide, feathers stacked above it in layers like the fringe on a painted figurehead, and a band of spirals running round the brow as neat as lace. Along the body every segment is cut with its own small shadow, so the whole thing seems to be coiling in the dark even though it lies perfectly still. I put my palm flat on one of the scales and it was warm. The harbour has been baking all week, I told myself, and the store has a tin roof.

Pryce wants it recrated for the London museum by Friday. I said I would help, and I will, but I have not told him what I did after he went home. I went back with a damp cloth and wiped the dust from the tail. Near the tip someone had carved a small cluster of seeds or bells, and one of them was loose, rattling faintly when I tilted it. I left it where it was.

Come home at Easter and bring the good chisels. I want you to hear it too.