Coloured line illustration of a stylised bird with a detailed green eye and pink, purple and red feathers on a white background.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Stylised bird with eye and feathers

Colour · Flash

The image shows a stylised bird head with a detailed green eye, surrounded by ornamental feather shapes. The linework is fine and dense, with dotted and hatched textures in the head and teardrop-shaped feather forms that taper down the body. Pink, purple, red and white inks are used on a plain white background, which fills most of the frame.

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dear Tom,

Keep reading

The big top came down in Boston on Tuesday, and Mr Vale has finally stopped pretending the Fenwick Brothers will ever play another season. We packed the wagons in sleet. Nobody talked much. Only the bird seemed pleased with anything, stalking up and down her perch in the caravan with her feathers fanned out like a lady's fan at a funeral.

You'll remember Saffron. Every morning this winter I painted her plumes again, the pink first, then the violet teardrops that run down her back, then the red tips, because the ink rubs off in the cold and she hates looking shabby. Her green eye never changes. Mr Vale says it's the only honest thing left in the company, that the eye tells you what the bird really thinks of you, and that she has never once blinked for the crowd.

Last night he opened the cage to count her out for the sale. She didn't go to the buyer's man. She climbed onto the caravan roof, shook out every feather, and sat there looking south over the fens while the rest of us watched her go pale in the lamplight. Then she was gone over the dyke, a smear of rose and violet against the grey.

I am writing this on the back of the handbill for the last show, which seems fitting. Mr Vale says it's no loss, but he kept staring at the empty perch long after the lamps went out. I am left holding the brush and the ink pot, which seems a poor exchange for a bird.

Write back soon. Tell Mum I have been eating.

Your sister, Nell

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