Black and grey realistic wing tattoo with detailed feather shading on the outer lower leg, above a black and white canvas trainer.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Shaded wing tattoo on the lower leg

Realism · Calf · Black and grey · Photo

A single wing, shown from its base to its tip, is tattooed on the outer lower leg and extends up towards the calf. The feathers are drawn with fine, layered linework and soft grey shading that gives the wing depth and volume. The image is in black and grey, with a plain white wall and wooden floor behind the leg and a pair of black trainers in the foreground.

Realism Calf Wing 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

The cloakroom at the Starling had hooks for coats and a biscuit tin for everything else, and on a wet Tuesday in March I found a wing behind the tin. It was cream satin stretched over a bent wire frame, the feathers gone grey at the tips from years under the stage lights. Marjorie said it belonged to Lou Mercer, who had danced the Easter rumba in a pair of them until the bandleader called her a show pony and she walked out into the rain without her coat.

Keep reading

Nobody had a forwarding address, so I hung the wing on the hook beside my own coat and told myself I'd post it on. Saturday came round with Frank on drums and the floor sticky with spilt lager, and the last waltz was called at half eleven. A man with a walking stick and a clean collar asked me up, and I didn't know what to do with my hands, so I held the wing up between us like a partner's arm. He laughed at that, then stopped laughing and simply let me lead.

A fortnight later a postcard arrived for Marjorie with a Blackpool tower on the front and four words on the back: keep the one. I read it twice before I understood it was not about the satin. Lou had taken the other wing with her, and she had decided the half she left behind was mine to look after.

I pinned it above my bed with the wire still bent the way she'd left it. Some nights the band plays up through the floorboards of the Starling and I can hear the boards take the weight of the waltz, and I lie there with one wing on the wall, lifting a little in the draught from the window.