Small black and grey dotwork tattoo of an anatomical heart on the inner wrist and forearm.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Anatomical heart on a wrist

Dotwork · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

A small anatomical heart with its aorta and vessels is tattooed on the inner wrist and lower forearm. The heart is built from fine stippled dots and short hatched lines, with the shading giving the chambers and vessels some depth. The image is black and grey against pale skin, with a dark sleeve filling the right side of the frame.

Dotwork Forearm Heart Anatomical heart Vessel

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Mrs Penhallow had charged Edwin a shilling extra for the use of the back parlour, and he paid it without complaint, because the light in there was good for stippling and the sea could not get at his plates. He had come to Saltcombe in February to finish a series of anatomical engravings for a surgeon in Bristol, and by April he had done nothing but sit at the window with a dip pen and a pot of ink, placing one small dot after another.

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The heart on the bench that morning was the fourth he had drawn. Its vessels rose from the top like roots turned the wrong way up, the aorta curling over the pulmonary trunk while short hatched lines gave the chambers their depth. He had been told that stippling was patience made visible, that each dot was a decision and a breath. Edwin did not feel patient. He felt the harbour bell counting out his fee in pence.

The following morning a girl from the scullery, Nell, came in with the post and stood looking at the drawing over his shoulder. She asked whether it was a real heart, and he said it was a copy of one that had belonged to a fisherman drowned off the Scar, and that the surgeon had kept the original in a jar. She asked if the jar had a name. He said no, and she laughed and went out, leaving the door open to the draught.

When the plate was finished he found, in the corner of the sheet, a dot he had not meant to make: one hard point where the ink had pooled. He almost blotted it. Instead he left it, and sealed the parcel for Bristol with the dot still there, a small dark place where the hand had stopped to listen.