Small colour tattoo of a peacock feather with green, blue and orange tones and a curling tip, sitting on a woman's shoulder near the collarbone.

Small peacock feather on a shoulder

Shoulder · Colour · Photo

A small tattoo of a peacock feather with a curled quill sits on the top of a shoulder, photographed from behind with the head turned away. The feather is shaded in green, teal and blue with an orange and yellow centre, and the outline is fine and dark. The plain skin and blurred dim background keep the focus on the small design.

Shoulder Peacock feather Feather Swirl

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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 bolt of peacock feathers came up from the station in a tin trunk that smelled of camphor, and Mr Oakes made you unpack it on the shop counter because nobody else in Hadley Cross would touch it. Each quill was bent a little from the journey. You smoothed them with a warm iron cloth until the greens came up like pond water under a skin of ice.

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Mrs Lutwyche came in on the Thursday with a grey felt hat that had outlived two husbands and a funeral. She wanted one feather, no more, and she wanted it curled at the tip like a question mark. You chose the best one, the one with the eye that flared teal at the rim and burned orange at the core, and you sat at the bench with a pot of gum and a pair of nippers while the wireless murmured the cricket scores.

When she came back a fortnight later the feather had been stitched so close to the brim that it seemed to grow out of the felt. She stood at the mirror and turned her head slowly, and for a moment the shop's one dim bulb caught the eye and it winked at her from under the brim.

She did not haggle. She left a shilling on the counter and a folded note written in looping ink. 'The feather is the only thing in this town that has ever looked back at me. Keep the trunk, and the cloth.' You read it twice, then slid the shilling into the till and watched the camphor drift out past the open door.