Black and grey engraved anatomical heart tattoo with numbered labels and fine hatching, on the upper arm.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Anatomical heart on upper arm

Realism · Upper arm · Black and grey · Photo

A detailed anatomical heart with its vessels and numbered reference labels is tattooed on the outer upper arm. The linework uses fine hatching and stippling in black and grey, giving the heart a vintage engraving look. The design fills the centre of the frame against plain skin, with the top of the shoulder and a dark garment at the edges.

Realism Upper arm Heart Anatomical heart Vein

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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

The cook of the Margaret Lowe kept a surgeon's book in his sea chest, its cover gone soft as bread from the damp. Inside was a heart drawn open like a net bag, every pipe and wall given a number. Tobias Renn could not read the words beside the numbers, so he made up his own. Number one was the mouth of the sea. Number nine was the room where the cold lived. Ten was the warm room, and he said the warm room was where a man kept his supper.

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In the third week out of Bristol the ship's boy, Jem Harrow, went grey in the face and would not eat. The surgeon had been left drunk in Lisbon, the captain said, and anyway there was no surgeon aboard any more. Tobias sat on an upturned bucket with the book open on his knees and the lamp swinging over the stove. He traced the pipes with a greasy thumb. Number eleven led to the little ear that listened. Number twelve ran back out toward the shoulder. If the cold had got into nine, he reasoned, the boy would need warming from ten.

He thickened the broth with barley, dripped in a spoon of the captain's brandy, and carried it down through the hatch the way a man carries a full bucket on a rolling deck. He did not spill a drop. He sat with Jem until the watch changed, saying the numbers aloud like a rosary, one to thirteen and back again.

By morning the boy had colour in his cheeks and wanted a biscuit. Tobias told nobody what he had done. He only took his pen and wrote Jem's name in small letters beside number ten, where the warm room was, and closed the book on it.