Colour tattoo of a stylised phoenix with orange, yellow and red shading and a swirling tail, on the back of a person's neck.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Stylised phoenix on the back of a neck

Neck · Colour · Photo

A stylised phoenix with a swept wing, forked tail and curling scroll at the base is outlined in a solid dark line. The body and wings are filled with a gradient of yellow, orange and red that fades towards the tail. The design sits centrally on the back of the neck, with the subject's hair pinned up above it and a blue top visible below.

Neck Phoenix Bird Swirl Wing

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 kiln at Hollin Edge had smoked for three days when the bird came down out of the ash-grey sky, and my father said nobody should watch a fire that long without it watching back. He was a charcoal burner, which meant he slept beside the stack and woke each hour to listen to it breathe. I was twelve and bored of listening, so I was the one who saw it land on the split birch.

Keep reading

It was bigger than a heron and lit from inside, the head the bright yellow of a struck match, the wings going to orange along their feathers like the edges of paper held too near a candle. Its tail forked in two and curled at the end into a tight scroll, like bracken unfurling in spring. Where the tail tapered, the colour burned down to red, the red of coals just before they go grey. It pecked at the bark and did not scorch the wood it stood on.

My father wanted to sell the feathers to the squire's man, who paid a shilling for anything rare. The bird would not let him near. Every time he reached, it lifted, wheeled over the clearing and settled a little further off, as if counting us. So I fed it what we had, the cracked ends of the charred billets nobody would buy, and it took them one by one, swallowing them whole and glowing a shade brighter after each.

When the kiln cooled and the squire's man had gone off with an empty cart, the bird rose on the last warm air and was gone over the beeches. In the sack beside the door I found one feather, its quill still hot. I keep it in the tin where the matches go. Some mornings, when the frost lies thick on the fields, I open the lid and the tip still gives a faint red light.