Realism-style colour tattoo of a teal phoenix with spread wings and orange-tipped tail feathers wrapping down across the ankle.

Teal phoenix with trailing orange tail on ankle

Realism · Ankle · Colour · Photo

A teal phoenix in flight is shown with spread wings and a head crest, with long tail feathers trailing down the leg in orange and coral tones with small eye-like markings. The bird is shaded with soft gradients and fine feather detail, and the tail curves down over the ankle and heel. The photograph is taken against a dark background with the leg filling most of the frame.

Realism Ankle Phoenix Bird Feather Wing Tail feather

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

You have kept the night shift at Carrow Junction for eleven winters, long enough to know that the platform lamps hum before they fail and that the 5:12 is never on time. So when the bird comes in through the broken pane above the ticket hatch, you assume it is another pigeon with ambitions. Then it lands on the lost property shelf between a child's wellington and a violin case, and its tail spills off the edge like something poured.

Keep reading

Orange and coral, the colour of a sky seen from a moving carriage. Each feather ends in a round marking that looks, unnervingly, like an eye. Its teal wings fold with the care of someone who has folded them many times before. You do not reach for it. You reach for the kettle instead, because the signal box has always been the place you go to think, and because the bird is watching you the way a stationmaster watches a late train.

Wrapped round one tail feather is a brass luggage tag, worn smooth. Locker 47, it reads, with a date from before you were born. You walk the length of the left-luggage room with the bird following on the rail above you, its tail trailing through the dust like a long gold thread. Locker 47 holds a single cardboard box, damp at the corners, containing a stack of letters tied with twine. Every envelope is addressed to Carrow Junction and none of them was ever sent.

You read the top one, and then you open the hatch. The bird does not hesitate. It climbs through the broken pane into the dawn, and far off you hear the 5:12 whistle at last, the platform lamps going out one by one, as though someone has finally been told where to go.