Pencil drawing of a phoenix in flight with spread wings and long tail feathers, surrounded by curling scroll shading, on a sketchbook page.

Phoenix with swirling feathers sketch

Black and grey · Flash

A pencil drawing on a spiral sketchbook page shows a phoenix with wings spread upward and a long, flowing tail of feathers curling down the left side of the page. The bird and feathers are shaded in fine hatched greys with detailed plumage, while the background is filled with swirling scroll lines. The composition runs diagonally from the top right to the bottom left and is photographed at a slight angle on a wooden surface.

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dear Marisol, the lamps on Hollins Row have all gone out again, so I am writing this by the light of the shop's old paraffin heater, which hisses every time I breathe too near it. You asked me to tell you what the bird did when the roof came down. Well, it did not burn. Everyone on the street expected it to, the way the stories say, but when the timbers gave way the bird came up out of the smoke with its wings open wide and the feathers streaming back over the rooftops like ink poured the wrong way. Mr Okafor from the bakery swore he saw the tail curl round the chimney stack and lift it clean off the bricks.

Keep reading

I have been drawing it every night since, on the back of invoices and the paper the wholesaler wraps the pencils in. The lines keep wanting to go somewhere I cannot follow, out past the edge of the page into the scrollwork that the council men painted over the shutters. I think that is the trick of it. Nothing that rises out of ash stays where you put it.

The feathers came loose this morning and drifted down onto the counter. I have pinned three of them above the till. Come by before the Thursday rain, and bring the good ink. I want to see if the last one will take.

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