Pencil drawing of a stylised bird with outstretched wings and a swirling tail, a tattoo design on paper with no body part shown.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Stylised winged bird design in pencil

Black and grey · Flash

A pencil drawing on pale paper of a stylised bird with outstretched wings, each wing ending in curling spirals. The body and tail are formed from bold, tapering dark lines that flow into long feather-like strands. The design is in black graphite only, centred on a plain background with a faint scribble in the top left corner.

Bird Wing Phoenix Feather Swirl Spiral Tail

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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 lost property shelf at Hallowgate Junction holds umbrellas, one glove, a child's wellington and whatever else people leave behind on the 17:42. On Tuesday a sketchbook came in, its pages soft from rain, and I was the one who opened it because Derek had gone for his tea.

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Most of it was timetables copied out in biro and shopping lists with the prices crossed out. Near the back was a bird drawn in pencil, wings held wide as if it had just lifted off a platform. The wingtips curled into tight spirals, and the body narrowed into a long tail that trailed off the edge of the page like steam from a shunting engine. Whoever drew it had pressed hard on the tail, so those lines had gone almost black.

My father kept a tin of pencil stubs in the signal box at Thornbeck, and on quiet nights he'd sketch birds on the backs of train sheets while he waited for the down line to clear. I'd always thought they were nothing much. I carried the book to the window, where the 18:05 was easing out under the lamps, and held it up so the bird faced the light.

I wrote a card, "Found: one sketchbook, one bird, no name," and tucked it under the glass with the gloves. On Friday a young woman came in asking after a red notebook. I showed her the bird. She laughed, took the book under her arm and said she had been trying to draw that same shape for years, and that it never once came out right until she stopped trying to finish the tail.