Drawn phoenix tattoo design with sweeping black tribal linework and purple, pink and blue coloured pencil shading on a white background.

Phoenix tattoo design in tribal linework

Mixed · Flash

A phoenix with outstretched wings, a curved neck and a long tail of flowing feathers that tapers into a peacock-style feather at the base. The design uses bold black tribal-style linework with swirls and spirals, and the wings and tail are shaded in purple, pink and pale blue coloured pencil. The bird is centred on a plain white page with open space around it.

Phoenix Bird Wing Feather Swirl Tail

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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

The immersion heater in Room Four has given up again, so you are on the back stairs with a bucket and a torch when Mrs Pell appears in her dressing gown to ask whether the sea has gone out for the night. You tell her it is still in the bay. You have been telling guests that since your mother died and left you the house, the ledger of wet towels, and a bureau full of pencils that nobody has ever tidied.

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The drawing lives in the bureau's bottom drawer, rolled inside an old tide table. Your mother made it the summer you were nine: a bird in purple and rose, wings lifted like the tide coming up the sand, a neck bent into a question mark, and a tail of black spirals that ends in a peacock feather with one blue eye. She told you it was the bird that burned and came back, and that the feather was what kept the sea from taking it. You thought that was the kind of thing grown-ups said to end a conversation, and you have been writing your bills on the back of it ever since.

On the morning after the November gale, the bay is flat and grey and the pier is missing two boards. You walk the tideline with the bucket, looking for whatever the water has brought up, and find a kite of purple silk tangled in a fishing net, its cane frame snapped. The tail has come loose and trails a single feather with a dark eye at its tip. You carry it home past the shuttered amusements and lay it on the kitchen table beside the drawing, and the two of them look as if they were always meant to sit together.

You pin the drawing above the kettle, where the steam can get at it. Mrs Pell comes down at seven and says the heater's working now, and it is, hot and rattling in the cupboard. You fill the kettle and the water comes up to the boil on time. Outside the gulls are already back on the rail, and the sea, which is still in the bay, keeps its distance.