Geometric feather on a forearm

Fine line · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

A feather is drawn as an outline of angular, faceted panels in thin black linework. The lines are a single weight with no shading, and the panels taper to a point at the base of the quill. The pale background and dark clothing keep the focus on the tattoo on the forearm.

Fine line Geometric Forearm 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

Dear Tom, the rain has come back to Ashgill and the lamps at the drift mouth are lit by four o'clock again. Mam says you will laugh at me, but I have been folding paper all week. Mr Hebden at the chapel gave me a sheet of the Gazette that was going to the fire, and I have been trying to copy the feather you left on the windowsill the morning you went.

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The feather was a jackdaw's, grey at the tip, and when you hold it to the light each barb is a little blade of shadow. I tried to draw it the way the surveyors draw the seams, straight lines and no shading, and every fold ended in a point exactly where the quill would be. You always said I could not sit still long enough to finish anything. Well, I have finished this one, and it is pinned above the kettle where the damp cannot reach it.

Dad's shift on Thursday ran long again. They found a seam running at a slant nobody had marked, and the overman had the men cut back in a fan shape, panel after panel, to keep the roof from dropping. Dad came home grey and said the cutting looked like the spine of a bird. I did not tell him I had already drawn it.

Write soon, and tell me whether the city has any birds that are not pigeons. I will send the paper pattern in the next envelope, so you can fold one yourself on the train and see where the lines meet.