Realistic red and black feather tattoo on the upper back, between the shoulder blades, with the person's hair visible above.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Red feather on upper back

Realism · Back · Mixed · Photo

A single feather is tattooed vertically on the upper back, with a shaft running from the top to the bottom of the quill. The shading moves from dark black at the edges and tips to bright red through the centre of the vane, giving the feather a three-dimensional look. The feather sits centrally against plain skin, with a teal wall and wooden surface behind the subject.

Realism Back Feather

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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 feather was caught under the windscreen wiper when we came over the ridge, pinned by its quill, and it was the colour of a brake light in the heat. Dad wanted to leave it there. I wanted it for the glovebox. We argued for eleven miles of corrugated road with the dust standing up behind us like a second car.

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It was a hawk's feather, or near enough, the kind that goes black at the edges where the sun has cooked the tips. The vane was bright through the middle, the red of cherries in a bowl, and when I held it up to the window the light came through it in a way I didn't expect. Dad said birds don't leave feathers on purpose. I said they do all the time, and that's how you know where they've been.

At the Halfway Store, a woman in a grey apron sold us two warm lemonades and looked at the feather for a long moment. She said a hawk had been sitting on the petrol pump all week, watching the road, and that it had flown north the morning before. Then she said nothing else and went back to her crossword.

We drove north with the window down and the feather tucked into the sun visor. Somewhere past the salt flats it lifted free and went out over the road, red, then black, then gone. Dad pulled onto the verge. Neither of us got out. I think we both wanted to see whether it would come back.