Colourful phoenix tattoo in a neo-traditional style across the shoulder, upper arm and back, with flowing red, orange, yellow and blue feathers.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Phoenix tattoo across shoulder and upper arm

Neo-trad · Upper arm · Colour · Photo

A large phoenix with a bird head and long, flowing tail feathers wraps from the upper arm over the shoulder and onto the back. The linework is bold and defined, with shading that blends red, orange and yellow into the feathers. Blue and teal accents run through the tail against a dark background, which makes the colours stand out.

Neo-trad Upper arm Shoulder Back Phoenix Bird Feather

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The stove had gone out twice before I thought to look in the locker under the bunk, and by then the cabin was so cold our breath hung over the tiller. Dad was still asleep in the fore end, snoring like a dredger, so I pulled the hatch boards off and climbed out onto the wet cabin top with the saw. Frost silvered the towpath and the Trent ran grey and quick beneath us.

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The boards were the old cabin doors, the ones Nan had painted before I was born. Roses and castles, Dad called them, though the castle had worn off long ago and only the bird was left, a phoenix in great swooping strokes with its head turned back over its shoulder. Red and gold ran down its body, and the tail fanned out in teal and blue feathers that had faded to the colour of a bruise. I told myself they were only boards. I hauled the first one down to the stove anyway.

The paint caught fast. Oil and old varnish went up with a roar, and for a moment the whole cabin glowed the colours of the bird: orange on the ceiling, yellow on the tin kettle, the teal tail thrashing across the window as if it wanted out. Dad came up the steps in his vest, shouting, then stopped and watched with one hand on the door frame. I waited for the belt. He only said, 'She always did like a bonfire,' and sat down on the step.

By morning the cabin was warm and the bird was ash in the grate. Dad went out with a bucket and scraped a few curls of blue paint off the rail, and I watched them drift past the hull into the grey current, bright as anything, until the river took them.