Forearm tattoo of an engraved-style anatomical heart with teal, yellow and green colour blocks and an orange line mandala beneath.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Anatomical heart and orange mandala on a forearm

Dotwork · Forearm · Mixed · Photo

The subject is an anatomical heart with visible vessels, drawn in an engraved style with stippled and hatched grey shading. Flat teal, yellow and green blocks sit behind and across the heart, while a fine orange outline of a geometric flower or mandala sits at its base. The tattoo fills the forearm against a dark wooden background.

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

Dear Tom,

Keep reading

The doctor came up from Wakefield on Tuesday with a box of old books, and the one he left on our kitchen table was a brown anatomy with engraved plates, every vein picked out in lines so fine they looked like hair. Mam wouldn't let me touch it until I'd scrubbed my hands twice at the sink.

Dad came up from Number Four grey as ash that week, and the doctor pressed two fingers to his chest and said the heart was doing its job even if the lungs were not. Afterwards I sat with the plate and tried to match the drawn vessels to the blue lines on Dad's wrists, and I couldn't make them agree, which I think was the point of the picture.

Mrs Oddy at the chapel sale sold me a tin of paint for a shilling, teal and yellow, the sort they used on the lamp-room doors. I painted squares across the plate without caring whether they lined up with the arteries. The orange I saved for the dahlia Dad brings home from the allotment on Sundays. I traced its petals in thread-fine lines with his old pen nib, and my hand shook only at the middle.

He looked at it a long time and said it looked like something that had been let out. I think he meant it kindly. Write soon, and tell me whether the sea in Canada has colour in it like that. Your sister, Ada.

More like this

Dotwork and engraved anatomical heart with three roses inside a triangle, with red and teal accents, on a lower leg.
Anatomical heart and roses in a triangle
Black and grey dotwork and linework tattoo on an upper arm showing a stag head with antlers, a flying goose and a crystal cluster within dotted geometric lines.
Stag, goose and crystals on upper arm
Black and grey koi fish tattoo with dotwork scale shading and fine line sprigs of foliage on a forearm.
Koi fish and fine line foliage on a forearm
Black and grey blackwork and dotwork tattoo of an anatomical heart overgrown with flowers and leaves, across an upper arm.
Anatomical heart with flowers on upper arm
Traditional style tattoo of a smiling crescent moon holding a mountain, pine trees and a UFO on a forearm, with a heart and handshake tattoo below.
Crescent moon with mountain scene on forearm
Colour peony tattoo with black outlines and soft watercolour-style washes in red, pink and yellow, with teal leaves running along a forearm.
Peony and leaves on a forearm
Watercolour style tattoo of two black blobs with thin tendrils and rainbow splashes on a lower leg above the ankle.
Watercolour splash and black blobs on a calf
Black and grey fine line tattoo of a fox head and bushy tail on the outer forearm, overlaid with geometric lines, hexagons and dots.
Geometric fox and hexagons on a forearm
Black and grey tattoo of a skeletal chameleon curling around a branch with leaves and a dotted spiral, on the forearm, in an engraving style.
Skeletal chameleon with leaves on a forearm
Grey and green tattoo of a horned bull skull framed by succulents and sprigs of lavender on the calf.
Bull skull with succulents on a leg
Black and grey barn owl perched on a branch with flowers and leaves inside a dotted circle, tattooed on the inner forearm.
Barn owl and flowers in a dotwork circle
Black and grey traditional tattoo of a leaping rabbit with a dotted arc and a flower with leaves, on the calf.
Leaping rabbit and flower on a calf

From the plentytattoo archive, uploaded by a user. Is this your work? Ask for credit or removal.