Black and grey dotwork lace dreamcatcher tattoo with three feathers and beads on the upper back, with part of another animal tattoo visible to the left.

Lace dreamcatcher on upper back

Dotwork · Back · Black and grey · Photo

A black and grey dreamcatcher tattoo sits on the upper back, its circular centre filled with stippled lace-like patterns, scrolls and a honeycomb mesh. Three shaded feathers hang from beaded strands below the hoop, with fine, soft shading that gives them depth. Part of a larger dark tattoo of an animal is visible on the left edge of the frame, and the photograph is taken from behind with no face shown.

Dotwork Realism Back Dreamcatcher Lace Feather Bead Animal

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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

The lock keeper at Hambleden has finally stopped asking me when Tom is coming back, so I am writing to you from the bench on the cabin roof with the kettle going and the cut smelling of rain. You will want to know about the hoop. Mrs Pryce at the boatyard traded it to me for two days' work on the tiller ropes, and she swore it would hold the nightmares the way a net holds river weed. I have hung it over the bunk where the light off the water comes in ripples. The mesh is honeycomb, worked by hand with more than four hundred bobbins, she said, though I didn't count, and the scrolls in the middle are the same whorls you see on a weir when the flow turns.

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Three feathers hang from it on silk thread, with jet beads strung between them like the knots on a rope. Grey ones, a gull's, I think, though the boatyard man swears wood pigeon. They sway when the barge leans into the bend below Marlow, and each time they do I hear the same small tick of beads against the hull, which is nothing like Tom's boots on the gangplank, but I listen for it anyway.

Last night I woke with my heart going like a winch. The feathers were turning slowly in the draught from the hatch, and I lay still counting the mesh holes the way Mrs Pryce taught me. Forty across, I got to, before I slept.

I have decided to stop waiting at Hambleden. The mooring is paid to Michaelmas and the hoop is coming with me. If you want to write back, address it to the yard at Henley, care of the woman with the grey plait. Tell Father I am well. Tell him the feathers are holding.