Black and grey realism tattoo of a feather running diagonally across the side of the torso, with soft shading along the barbs.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Realistic feather on the side of the torso

Realism · Ribs · Black and grey · Photo

A large feather is drawn diagonally across the skin, with its darker, densely shaded base at the upper left and a lighter, feathered tip sweeping down to the lower right. The barbs are rendered with fine grey shading and a clear central shaft, giving the feather a soft, three-dimensional look. The image is a close, slightly angled photograph of the side of the torso against plain skin tones.

Realism Ribs 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

Harrow & Velli's folded in the wet October the big top finally split along its seam. Nobody bought tickets that autumn. We loaded the caravans in a field outside Shrewsbury while rain sheeted off the canvas, and my uncle Teodor counted the lamps twice, as if one might have wandered off in the night.

Keep reading

I had a feather in my coat pocket. It came off Dorothea, the grey parrot, who had shed her long tail feathers across the high rigging the summer before, and I was the only one small enough to climb up after them. This one was dark at the root, the colour of a wet crow, and it thinned towards the end into a pale fringe that lifted when you breathed on it. I kept it because it was the last thing that had flown for us.

Teodor found me sitting on the drawbar of the final wagon. He didn't tell me to get up. He sat beside me, lit a cigarette he was not supposed to have, and watched the wind lift the dust off the empty ring. "Feathers don't know where they're going," he said. "They just go." I asked him where we were going, and he said, "Somewhere with a roof that doesn't leak."

I opened my hand and let the feather go. It turned over twice, dark end leading, then the pale fringe caught the wind and carried it down the field, low over the stubble, past the hedge and out of sight. I never saw it land. Teodor said that was the only honest kind of ending a show could ever hope for.