Black and grey geometric feather tattoo on the inner forearm, with an outlined faceted top fading into solid black dotwork at the base.

Geometric feather on a forearm

Geometric · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

A single feather is tattooed on the forearm, drawn as an outline of angular, faceted panels along the upper half and filled in solid black at the lower half. The shaft runs down the centre, with a fine tail extending below the vane. The base transitions into stippled dotwork that softens the edge between the solid and linework sections, and the design is centred on the forearm against a plain white background.

Geometric Dotwork Blackwork Forearm Feather

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The glazier of Scarth had cut panes for the chapel, the bank and every dairy window in the valley for forty years, and in the spring of 1956 a gale cracked the east window in two. The vicar sent word up the lane, but Amos Dell's hands had started to shake over the diamond, so he sent his daughter Nell instead with a canvas roll of tools and a sheet of his old drawings.

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Nell found the drawing at the bottom of the roll: a feather built from faceted panes, the vanes cut like crystal along the top and the lower half left dark, where the lead would not let the light through. Her father had drawn it before she was born and never once made it. She worked by lamp in the scullery, one pane an hour, and the jackdaws from the church roof came down onto the skylight to watch her through the glass.

On the last night a jackdaw took the cutting diamond from the sill and flew off with it to the ridge. Nell climbed after it in her stockinged feet, and the bird, which could not carry a pane of glass, dropped a black wing feather at her feet instead. She set it into the lead as the lowest panel and painted the dark part with stipple from a sable brush, so the shadow would fade soft across the nave.

On Sunday the sun came through the east window and laid the feather down the length of the pews in blue and amber. The vicar said Scarth had never seen better work. Amos sat at the back with his cap on his knee and watched the colour slide over the hymn books, then said only that the top was too clean and the bottom about right.