Colourful Japanese style phoenix tattoo with peacock style feathers and red flowers running down the side of a torso and onto the thigh.

Phoenix and flowers down the side

Japanese · Ribs · Colour · Photo

A large phoenix with outstretched wings and a long tail sits across the ribs and flows down onto the thigh, with swirling clouds, green leaves and orange flowers filling the gaps. The linework is bold and outlined, with shading used for the feathers and the bird's body. Strong reds, oranges, greens and blues dominate, and the design wraps around the curve of the body in a continuous composition.

Japanese Ribs Thigh Phoenix Bird Flower Feather Peacock feather Swirl Leaves Cloud

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The lamp in the galley had been smoking since Fremantle, and Ada Vance wiped its chimney for the third time that watch rather than go back up on deck. The swell had run long and grey for a week, the sort that lifted the bow like a held breath and let it drop. Her brother's letter sat folded inside her oilskin, unopened since the Cape.

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Pim the carpenter had carved a bird into the lid of his sea chest the year he sailed with his wife's ashes in a tin, and he liked to say it was only a bird that had been through a bad week. He let Ada trace the long tail with her thumb. The feathers ran out into round, patient eyes, and he told her those were for watching the weather.

On the ninth night the stove flue cracked and spilled fat caught along the bulkhead. Ada beat it out with a wet sack while the cook shouted for the boats. By dawn the paint was blistered and black, and the orange flowers Pim had painted for the saloon had run down into the scorch like something climbing out of it.

Pim took one look, laughed, and fetched his brushes. Leave the eyes to me, he said. Ada sat on an upturned crate and finally broke the seal on her brother's letter, while beyond the hull the sea turned from grey to green.