Drawing of an infinity symbol tattoo design with fine black script reading life and love, a blue, pink and teal feather, and small birds flying off, on white paper.

Infinity feather with life and love script

Fine line · Mixed · Flash

A pen and colour drawing of a tattoo design on plain white paper. A fine black infinity loop carries the words life and love in cursive script, and a feather with soft blue, pink and teal shading sits across the centre, with small coloured birds lifting away from its tip to the right. The black linework is crisp and even, while the feather is shaded with blended coloured pencil or marker strokes.

Fine line Lettering Infinity Feather Bird Script Life Love

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

You find the feather at first light, tangled in the mesh of the starboard net, blue at the root and fading to hot pink at the tip, as if someone had dipped it in two paint tins and changed their mind halfway. Nobody else on the Marigold has noticed it. Ray is too busy swearing at the winch, and the lad from Hull is sick over the rail again, so you work it free with cold fingers and tuck it inside your oilskin.

Keep reading

Back in Lowestoft the feather stays in your pocket through three more trips. You forget about it until the spring slack, when your mother posts a parcel with a card in her looping hand that says only Life is short, Love is longer. You laugh, because she never could leave a sentence alone. You read it out to Ray over tea in the canteen. He says gulls don't leave feathers like that, that's tern work, and you tell him you have never once seen a tern on a trawler.

On the last trip of the season the weather turns and you are hauling in the dark. The feather works loose again and goes skittering across the deck toward the scuppers. You are about to let it go when a gust lifts it straight up past the wheelhouse, where it hangs for a moment, catches the lamp and flares blue and red before it slides out over the black water.

You don't chase it. You watch until the light is only a smear in the spray, then go back to the nets with the rope cold in your hands, and you find you are smiling. Ray says that is the first sign of a man who has been at sea too long.