Colour realism tattoo of an anatomical heart with blue and red vessels on the forearm.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Anatomical heart on a forearm

Realism · Forearm · Colour · Photo

The tattoo shows an anatomical human heart with red muscle, blue and red vessels at the top, and yellow and orange lines tracing the surface arteries. Soft shading gives the organ volume, and the linework is detailed. It sits on a pale forearm resting on a green paper dental bib, with a drawn design sheet visible at the top left.

Realism Forearm Heart Anatomical heart Vein

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The speeches had run long, and Nan Hollis decided I was the only person in the marquee she trusted with her sketchbook. It was a spiral pad gone soft at the corners, and every page she turned had the same red organ on it, drawn in biro and then coloured in with pencils she'd sharpened with a Stanley knife. Her yellow lines ran over the surface like rail tracks. Beside the biggest vessel she had written, in capitals, LEFT CORONARY, THE ONE THAT ALWAYS RUNS OFF.

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"Thirty-one years on the wards at St James's," she said, "and I never once drew a heart that looked like it was in a hurry. Do you know why?" I didn't. She tapped the page. "Because nobody in a hurry has ever kept one going for eighty years." Her husband had died in March. She had come to the wedding anyway, in a navy hat that had been to every christening in the family, and she had told me that the couple getting married had the sort of bloodlines that made doctors nervous.

She asked me to carry the book across the dance floor to the bride. I found her by the cake, sleeves rolled, arguing gently with a caterer about the icing. I held the pad open at the last page. It was the same heart, but there was a single new vessel leaving it, drawn in green, looping out past the edge of the paper. Underneath, Nan had written: THIS ONE GOES TO THE CAR PARK. IT ALWAYS COMES BACK.

The bride read it twice, then laughed so loudly the caterer looked up. She took the pencil from behind my ear and drew a small arrow pointing back towards the marquee, where the groom was still shaking hands with men in cravats. Nan, across the room, lifted her teacup to us both.