Colour peacock tattoo with ornate black linework and an orange sunburst behind its head, running down the ribs in a neo-trad style.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Peacock and sun on the ribs

Neo-trad · Ribs · Mixed · Photo

A tall peacock in profile is tattooed along the side of the torso, with its head raised towards a sunburst of orange and yellow dots. The bird has bold black outlines and detailed ornamental patterning across its body, while the tail feathers are filled with teal, green, blue and gold eye motifs that fan down towards the hip. The composition follows the curve of the ribs, with the tail tapering toward the waistband of dark jeans.

Neo-trad Ribs Peacock Feather Sun Ornament Eye

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The bird is on the lamppost outside the Corran Street baths when you turn the corner at ten past three, its tail spilling down the iron like someone poured out a jar of green ink and forgot to stop. Nobody else on the street has noticed. A pawnbroker's advert flickers in the bus shelter, a cat stares from a wall, and a peacock the size of a child stands with its crest raised to the orange glow of the streetlight, as if it has been waiting for a sunrise that owes it money.

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The night porter at the Dorrance Conservatory swore the birds had all been sold to a travelling circus in the spring. You had heard otherwise from Maude at the bakery, who said the last cock had been kept back by the old glassmaker's widow and fed on bread crusts behind the greenhouse. You carry a sack of stale loaves from the bakery's back step and a torch with a dying battery. The bird watches you approach with its head tilted, each eye on its feathers catching the light like a small, unblinking moon.

It steps down from the post without hurry and walks ahead of you up the hill, stopping at every iron gate to check you are still following. Its tail sweeps the wet pavement, gathering leaves, cigarette ends and a bus ticket. Past the chapel, past the shuttered bookmaker, the sky over the river thins from black to the colour of weak tea.

At the top, the conservatory glass is cracked and the door hangs open on one hinge. Inside, the air smells of earth and rain. The bird spreads its feathers into a fan of a hundred watchful eyes and gives a cry like a rusted gate. You break the bread on the step and wait for the sun to finish climbing the chimneys, which it does, slowly, as if it too had been locked out for the night.