Black and grey phoenix tattoo with spread wings and a long feathered tail across a person's upper back.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Phoenix across upper back

Back · Black and grey · Photo

A large phoenix with outstretched wings and a crested head faces right across the upper back and shoulder blade. Fine linework and grey shading define the feathers, and the long tail feathers sweep down towards the lower back in curling, scalloped plumes. The black and grey photograph is cropped to the back, with the head and face out of frame and a lace bra strap visible at the bottom edge.

Back Phoenix Bird Wing Feather Tail feather

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 reunion was held in the same hall where the school had once handed out prizes for spelling, and the trophy cupboard was still locked. Nobody expected the bird. It came in low over the car park at dusk, its wings wider than the goalposts, and the men by the urn stopped talking to watch it.

Keep reading

Its tail fanned out behind it in long grey plumes, each one curling at the tip like a wave about to break. Ada Pell, who had been the cleverest girl in Form Four, said it was the phoenix from the library book, the one nobody ever borrowed because the ending was sad. Her husband said she had always been a liar about books. She was not lying.

The old story says the phoenix builds its own fire every few hundred years and comes up out of the ashes. Everyone in that hall had burned something: a marriage, a shop, a name they had stopped using. They sat in their rows and kept quiet. The bird landed on the stage, folded its wings, and looked along the room the way the headmaster used to look along the register when someone was missing.

When it lifted again, it left a single feather on the floorboards. Ada picked it up and found it warm. She put it in her handbag and walked home the long way, past the school gates, and for the first time in twenty years she did not hurry.