Black and grey tattoo of an anatomical heart on a forearm, with stormy waves, clouds and a small house drawn inside the heart.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Anatomical heart with waves and a house

Dotwork · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

The tattoo shows an anatomical heart with its vessels at the top, and the lower chamber opens onto a scene of rolling waves, clouds and a small wooden house on a shore. The linework is fine and engraved, with dense hatching and stippling that builds shadow and texture across the heart and water. Only black and grey ink is used, and the design sits on pale skin against a plain light background.

Dotwork Forearm Heart Anatomical heart Wave Sea Cloud House

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

The sea came up the shingle the week after Tomas went out, and by the Sunday it had reached the bottom step of Ada's house. She watched it from the window with her hands in the flour bowl. The neighbours said she should go up the hill to her sister's, and she said she would when the bread had proved.

Keep reading

Her husband had left a tin of ship's biscuit, a coil of tarred line and a clock that ran four minutes fast. She wound the clock every morning and set the loaves on the sill. When the swell came over the breakwater she carried the clock upstairs, and the water followed her as far as the landing, lapping at the boards like a dog that had lost its master.

On the ninth night the wind dropped and the sea went flat and grey. Out past the gull rocks something pale rose and fell. It was a boat, or the shape of one, with no lamp and no oars, and it drifted in on the slack tide until its keel grated against the step.

Ada went down in her nightdress with the lamp. There was no one aboard, only a wooden box lashed to the thwart, and inside it a heart wrapped in oilcloth, still warm from the stove she had left burning. She carried it up and set it on the windowsill beside the bread. By morning the water had gone back out to where it belonged, the house sat dry on its shingle, and the lamp was still lit.