Black and grey tattoo of peacock feathers and lace-like ornament across a thigh, with a shaded lotus flower on the hip.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Peacock feather and lotus thigh tattoo

Botanical · Thigh · Black and grey · Photo

Dense, ornamental peacock feathers and lace-like patterning cover the outer thigh, with fern-like sprigs at the lower edge. A large lotus flower with shaded petals sits on the hip. The work uses fine linework and dense hatching in black ink and greys, photographed on a dark blue towel.

Botanical Geometric Thigh Peacock feather Lotus Lace Mandala Paisley Fern Flower

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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

Mairi carried her bobbin cushion out to the orchard wall every morning, because the peacock on the wall would not come down until the lace was finished. It was an old bird with a torn crest and a voice like a rusted gate, and it watched her set the pins with the flat patience of a magistrate. Her grandmother had made the same bargain with it, and her grandmother's grandmother, and the lace merchants on the mainland still called the pattern Ashgrove Eyes without knowing where the eyes had come from.

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The trouble began in the spring, when a buyer from Glasgow sent word that he wanted a shawl with a lotus at its centre, and no one on Ardcree had ever seen a lotus. Mairi walked to the freshwater loch at the north end of the island, where the reeds stood thick and a few white flowers floated on the black water. She picked one, sat on a stone, and drew its petals in charcoal on the back of a flour sack. The bird followed her the whole way there, and when she turned for home it was already perched on the stone beside her, shaking out its tail.

She worked the lotus into the lace that summer, with the feather eyes stitched in blue thread along every border. The shawl sold for more than her father had earned in a year. On the night the last payment came, the peacock flew up onto the cottage ridge and called once across the dark water. Mairi went out with a lamp and found a single feather lying on the step. She threaded it onto her needle, and from then on she never finished a pattern without leaving one eye open in the lace for the bird to look through.