Black ink brush-stroke drawing of an abstract curved design on a white background, suitable as a tattoo stencil or flash.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Abstract black brush-stroke design

Black and grey · Flash

A stylised design made of bold black brush strokes on a white background. Tapered curved lines form loose shapes that suggest an abstract figure or motif, with a small dot-like terminal near the centre. The image is monochrome with no shading, and the composition is open, with the design sitting in the upper and middle part of the frame.

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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

Dear Ysolde, you asked in your last letter whether the master has forgiven me for the spilt ink on the silk. He has not, but he has stopped mentioning it, which in this house amounts to the same thing. Yesterday he sent me to the river with a reed brush and a jar of the grey ink we keep for rain, and told me to paint a heron before the tide turned. I managed the neck. The rest kept running off the paper like water off a goose.

Keep reading

He came down to the landing at dusk, looked at my wet sheet for a long time, and said nothing. Then he took the brush from me, dipped it once, and drew a stroke so fast I barely saw his wrist move. It swept up from the bottom corner, thickened, and thinned to a hair at the top, like a leaf lifting off the water. Below it he set a small dot, pressed and lifted, and said, "There. Now it is looking at something."

I have sat with that sheet all night. The heron is not finished, I know that, but the dot watches me across the room, and I think I understand what he meant. The eye is the only part that must be decided at once. Everything else can be argued with.

Tell your mother the northern cart will come on Thursday. Burn this letter after you read it, as I have promised to do with all my others, and I will do the same with yours.

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