Greyscale drawing of a dove in flight with outstretched wings, set against a sunburst and soft clouds, shown as a tattoo design without any body placement.

Flying dove with sunburst and clouds

Realism · Black and grey · Flash

A dove with wings spread and one wing reaching forward is drawn in soft pencil-like shading, with feather detail on the wings and tail. Pale rays radiate from a glowing sun behind the bird, and wispy clouds frame the scene. The image is entirely black and grey, with the bird centred and the background fading to white at the edges.

Realism Dove Bird Sunburst Sun Cloud Ray Feather

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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

Mind the fire, child, and don't interrupt me when I get to the mist. Forty days the fog sat on Hollin Edge that autumn, so thick the rooks walked instead of flew. Tomas Vell had gone up with the flock that morning, and the fog came down behind him like a shut door. By dusk the whole village stood at the wood's edge banging pans and calling into nothing.

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Old Bet Harrow was the one who saw it. She swore the cloud over the ridge had a thin place in it, a patch the colour of pewter where the sun was trying to get through, and in the middle of that patch a dove turned once, slow as a hand opening. It came down low over the hedges. Every time it wheeled, a shaft of light broke the murk behind it, long pale rays laid across the bracken like the spokes of a cartwheel, and the men marched towards them and kept their feet on the path.

They found Tomas at the stone cross at the top of the field, sitting with his back to the wind and his crook across his knees. The dove was perched on the cross arm, bright and patient. When he stood, it lifted, and the light went up with it, and the fog peeled back from the valley like a blanket pulled off a sleeper. Nobody ever agreed on whether the bird flew up into the sun or simply became it.

Bet kept the feather he dropped on the path. Grey, soft at the root, with a dark tip. She pressed it into the church Bible at the page where the flood ends, and when she died it was still there. Walk to the wood's edge at noon in autumn, and if the light is right, you'll see one feather turning down through the rays. Don't catch it. Let it land where it likes.