A red and blue-grey phoenix tattoo with outstretched wings and a long flowing tail, placed on the side of the ribs.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Red phoenix on a side ribcage

Ribs · Colour · Photo

A phoenix in flight is tattooed along the side of the ribcage, with its wings spread upward and its long tail feathers sweeping down towards the hip. The linework is soft and the wing feathers are shaded with lighter blue-grey highlights over a deep red body. The bird fills the frame diagonally against bare skin, with a dark strap and a bag handle visible in the background.

Ribs Phoenix Bird Feather Wing Tail

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

The lift at Cadwell House had been broken since the spring, so Nan Iqbal carried her shopping up nine floors and talked to the bird on every landing. It was a red thing, she said, the colour of a pillar box in the rain, and it roosted on the parapet above the bin store where nobody could reach it. Nobody believed her until the feathers started coming down.

Keep reading

They came down slowly, each one turning over the car park like a dropped match that had thought better of burning. Dev from flat fourteen gathered them into a Co-op bag and sold them to a man in Walsall who tied fishing flies. The council sent a letter about pigeons. The bird did not care for letters. It sat through the wet February with its wings folded tight, and the feathers it shed were grey at the tips, then blue, as if it were being unmade slowly from the edges.

In March the demolition notice went up beside the lift doors. Nan stood in front of it with her bag and said a thing could not be burned if it did not want to be. She climbed to the roof with a flask of tea and found the bird waiting, its long tail hanging down the side of the building like a red curtain pulled half shut.

When the crane came in April the whole estate came out to watch. The bird lifted off the parapet, slowly at first and then faster, and its tail swept down past the windows of every floor, brushing the glass with light. Dev swore afterwards the feathers were still falling when the last flat went dark. The lift was never fixed. Nobody needed it by then.