Wallace and Gromit villain Feathers McGraw becomes tattoo parlour hit

A month on from Feathers McGraw’s dramatic return as Wallace and Gromit’s silent nemesis, the villainous penguin seems to have become an unlikely hit at UK tattoo parlours.

McGraw, an evil penguin comically disguised as a chicken thanks to the red rubber glove he wears on his head, is the chief antagonist in Aardman’s Oscar-nominated Vengeance Most Fowl, which aired on Christmas Day last month.

Since the movie’s release, McGraw has become a viral sensation, with images of him appearing widely online and, according to tattoo artists, on to many fans’ skin.

“In this last week just gone I did six Feathers,” Faith Garvie, a tattoo artist at Black Moon Tattoo Studio in Liverpool, told the PA news agency.

“I’ve been brought to tears a couple of times because people have been so positively impacted by the tattoos.”

This month, social media platforms have been awash with people posting pictures of their freshly inked McGraw tattoos, from Worcestershire to Lancashire and Cornwall.

Asked why she thinks the character has captured the imagination, Ms Garvie, 33, said: “I guess it’s just the magic of claymation, as he’s so emotive, but he doesn’t speak at all.”

She said her tattoos take between one and three hours to create, mainly inked on to people’s arms and legs, and most clients are women between the ages of 18 and 30 – but some have bucked this trend.

“I’m super lucky with my clients, we have the most wonderful conversations about why they’re getting the tattoos,” she said.

“A lot of it will be they grew up with the characters or their family grew up with them.

“One guy came in and got his first tattoo, it was of the Feathers wanted poster.

“He was the dad of two teenagers and said he had really wanted the tattoo since lockdown, so that was really lovely.”

Among those being tattooed is university student Gia O’Donohoe, 20.

“I remember seeing the film when it came out on Christmas Day on the BBC and it was at that moment that I thought, that’s just so funny and I was going to get a Feathers tattoo,” the student, who studies international relations and politics at Liverpool John Moores University, told PA.

“When I saw the scene with him and the seal, it was a lightbulb moment and I knew it was going to be that one.”

Ms O’Donohoe had an image of McGraw with a seal pup on his lap, a tongue-in-cheek reference to James Bond villain Ernst Stavro Blofeld, tattooed on to her right arm by the Brass Tattoo Company in Liverpool.

Posting it on X, formerly Twitter, the image received more than 9,000 likes and 200,000 views earlier this month, and was even reposted by Wallace and Gromit creators Aardman.

“It was kind of crazy, I just decided to tag them and they were one of the first people who liked it, and then they reposted it and then it got 3,000 likes overnight,” she said.

She said that while she loves McGraw, her favourite character is actually Gromit, and she has a tattoo of him sitting in an armchair knitting, on her left leg.

“He’s a really cool character and even though he’s docile, sometimes he can flick a switch and become the hero of the day,” she explained.

Ms Garvie said there are two particular images of McGraw to which customers are drawn.

“One of them is from Wallace and Gromit: The Wrong Trousers – it’s where Feathers gets stuck in a glass bottle,” she said.

“Everyone seems to adore that and some people get it with the glove on his head and others without.

“There’s also a scene – again, where he’s in The Wrong Trousers, where he’s standing at the bottom of the stairs in Wallace and Gromit’s house and he looks over at them, and people get that scene a lot as well.”

After a month producing tattoos of her favourite Wallace and Gromit character, Ms Garvie said she intends to get one of her own soon – once business calms down.

“It’s mainly just finding the time to be honest,” she said.