Black ink flash design of a stylised bird with feathered wings and curling swirls, drawn as a tattoo design on a plain white background.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Stylised bird with feathered wings in black ink

Blackwork · Black and grey · Flash

A bold, symmetrical design of a stylised bird-like figure with feathered wings at the top and a long tail of flowing feathers below. The shapes are solid black with fine curling lines and swirls that taper to points. The image is monochrome on a plain white background with the design centred and filling most of the frame.

Blackwork Bird Feather Wing 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

You come in at half past three, before the shutters go up on Mill Lane, and find the ovens already roaring. Dorota has left a note in biro on the flour bin: Starter's sulking. Talk to it. The crock sits by the deep sink under a damp tea towel, bubbling faintly, and you lift the cloth and say good morning like a fool, because Ferris taught you that a starter remembers who speaks to it.

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Ferris left you his lame, a bent razor on a worn wooden handle, and a habit of scoring a bird into the top of the country loaf. Long sweeping strokes that lift at the ends into curls. A loaf needs a way out for its steam, he used to say, and a bird is the best way out there is. You have never got the curls right. Your first cut drags and opens into a fan of crumb. The second swoops too far and gives the bird a tail like a dropped scarf.

Through the window the sky goes from ink to slate. Rooks lift off the chapel roof opposite, and the bakery smells of scorched sugar and warm rye. You slide the peel under the loaves and feel their weight settle, the way Ferris said you would.

At six you pull them out. One has split along its scoring so cleanly that its wings seem to be flung open and its long tail trails toward the corner of the tray. You set it on the cooling rack and leave it there. When the shutters rattle up, the first customer in the queue is already pointing at it.