Watercolour-style bird tattoo on the back
Back · Colour · Photo
A bird, possibly a phoenix, with wings spread and head turned to the right, drawn with loose black linework over painterly strokes of red, orange, purple, blue and teal. The feathers dissolve into splashes of colour at the wings and tail, while the black lines give the outline and structure. The tattoo is centred on the lower back and fills most of the frame against plain skin.
Find an artist for thisTake 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 well at Corran Hollow had gone dry in the summer the blacksmith's daughter stopped singing, and nobody in the village thought to connect the two until the bird came down. It was not a crow and not a heron, though Old Maud swore it had a heron's neck. It landed on the wall of the threshing barn with its wings still open, and the barn-light went red and orange and then a bruised purple where the feathers caught the evening.
Keep reading
The daughter, Isla, went out with a bucket because her mother told her to, and found the bird with its head turned away from her, as if it were listening to the hills. When she set the bucket down, the bird stepped forward and pressed its beak against the rim. Water rose through the wood and spilled over, cold and clear, and the bird drank until its feathers ran with colour like wet paint, blue at the tips and teal at the throat.
They say the well came back that night, and the song too, though Isla would only hum it. The bird stayed three days on the barn wall, then lifted off into the north with its tail trailing sparks. Years later a traveller asked the miller's widow whether such a bird was a real thing. She looked at the water in her bucket, which had a faint gold shimmer on the surface, and said only that it had drunk well.
More like this
From the plentytattoo archive, uploaded by a user. Is this your work? Ask for credit or removal.