Close photo of a small black and grey shaded pair of angel wings tattooed on the inner wrist, with the palm and fingers visible above.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Small black and grey wings on a wrist

Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

A pair of small angel wings sits side by side on the inner wrist, one wing facing left and the other right. The feathers are drawn with clean outlines and soft grey shading that gives them depth. The ink is entirely black and grey against pale skin, and the wrist is centred in the frame with the palm and fingers above it.

Forearm Wing Angel 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

Mind the step, it's loose, like most things on Skerrow since the big storm. Sit yourself down by the stove. You want the one about Maeve Tallack and the two gulls, or the one about the lamp? I'll give you the gulls, because the lamp is only sad.

Keep reading

Maeve mended nets in the lee of the harbour wall, and her brother Owen sailed the Mary Ann across to Ardgrey every Thursday with eggs and salt fish. One Thursday the boat was not back by dark. Old Dessie Cann lit the tower lamp late and swore on his mother's grave that he saw two white shapes circling the skerries below, one banking left and one banking right, as if somebody had tied the sea in a bow and left the ends loose.

Maeve went down to the midden and dug out two gull wing bones, cleaned them with sand and her thumb until they shone like teeth. With a sail needle she scratched the feathers in, row on row, pressing hard so the grey would sit in the grooves. She lashed one to each oar handle with tarred twine, one facing out to the left and one to the right, and pushed off into the swell without waiting for the tide to turn her way.

Owen came in at first light, rowing alone, the Mary Ann's sail hanging in rags. He said the wings had come to him through the fog like two hands on his back, steering him the way he had always wanted to go. Dessie kept the bones on the lamp-room shelf after that. Every Thursday since, somebody on Skerrow holds a bit of driftwood up to the window and says, there, that way, and nobody argues.