Black and grey fine line and dotwork back tattoo of flowing feather shapes and mandala-style ornament across the upper back and lower back.

Ornamental feather back piece

Fine line · Back · Black and grey · Photo

A bare back, photographed from behind in black and white, is covered by a large tattoo of sweeping feather-like contours with beaded lines and mandala-style medallions. Across the lower back and hips, dense patterned panels of scrollwork and stippled detail mirror the upper design. The fine linework and dotwork shading are crisp, and the symmetrical composition follows the curve of the spine.

Fine line Dotwork Back Feather Mandala Paisley Swirl Ornament Back piece Bead Scrollwork

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

The lift was out again on the fourteenth floor, so I carried the shawl up the stairs in a carrier bag, wrapped in newspaper, because Mr Haddad said he would not trust it to the post. He met me on the landing in his slippers and took it from me as if it might still be warm. Inside his flat the radiator ticked and the kettle was already on. He unfolded the cloth across his kitchen table and smoothed it with both palms. Peacock eyes stared up at us from the paisley, each one ringed with tiny glass beads, and the whole thing swept from one corner to the other like a wing held in a draught.

Keep reading

He wanted the loose beads restitched before his granddaughter's wedding. Most of the work was simple, a matter of counting and matching thread, but I spent three evenings under my desk lamp with a magnifier, tracing the scrollwork with my fingertip before I dared to touch it. On the third night I found a row of medallions where the stitching stopped one bead short of the border and then carried on again, as if someone had set down her needle to answer a door and never picked it up. I rang him to ask. He was quiet for a long time, then said his wife had always left one bead loose in everything she made, so the work could breathe out.

I left that bead alone. I bound off the rest, pressed the cloth under a damp towel, and wrapped it in tissue for the walk back to him. Going home, I stopped on the eighth-floor balcony and looked down at the car park, where somebody had strung fairy lights across a dead cherry tree. My own thread was still caught on my cardigan sleeve, a long dark loop, and I left it there until the wind took it.