Full back tattoo of a red and grey phoenix among plum blossoms, in Japanese style, shown on a person's back.

Red and grey phoenix with blossoms across a back

Japanese · Back · Mixed · Photo

A large full-back tattoo shows a phoenix with a flowing tail of feathers, curling red and grey plumes, and scales-like feather patterns. Red plum or cherry blossoms sit among the feathers, with smoky grey clouds in the background. The fine black linework is combined with grey shading and red and cream colour, and the design wraps around the back and side of the body.

Japanese Back Phoenix Bird Feather Flower Cloud 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

You have the lift key on a shoelace again, and the fourteenth floor smells of Mrs Akande's curry and wet concrete. The bin chute at the end of the walkway has been jammed since March. Somebody has painted a tangle of red across the stairwell wall overnight, and by the time you reach the landing a crowd of kids is already photographing it on their phones.

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The painter is Ruth Calloway from flat 22, who once told you she only ever drew birds in the margins of council letters. She is up a stepladder with a tin of plum-red emulsion and a brush the width of a finger. Her sketch is pinned to the lift door: a long tail that keeps unfurling past the edge of the paper, feathers turning into smoke, and in one corner three small blossoms she says are for the lads who lost their dads in the Thameside fire. You tell her the council will have it off by Friday. She says then it will be a Friday's worth of phoenix.

Next morning the painting is still there, though someone has added a grey cloud behind the head and a row of tea lights along the skirting. The bin chute is clear. Ruth has gone to her sister's in Margate. You stand on the landing with your mug going cold and watch the sun come up over the car park, catching the red so the whole stairwell seems to breathe.

The caretaker's van pulls in at ten with a pot of grey primer and a face like a closed shutter. You unlock the rubbish room and find a black bag tied neatly by the door, with a note in biro that says only: don't scrub the tail. You leave it where it lies.