Two fingers with small tattoos, a black line-work anchor on one finger and a colour shark fin above blue water on the next, with black lettering across the knuckles and fingers.

Anchor and shark finger tattoos

Lettering · Hand · Mixed · Photo

Close photograph of two hands held together, showing a small black outline anchor on one finger and a simple coloured shark fin rising from blue water on the adjacent finger. Black block lettering runs across the fingers and the back of the hand, with a small cross on one finger, and the background is dark and out of focus.

Lettering Hand Anchor Shark Water Letter Cross Finger Hand

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

Dolan had the shark drawn on his finger before the Mary Ellen ever left Grimsby, and by the time she dropped her net off the Shetland shelf nobody aboard doubted the thing was more than ink. The cook swore it watched him peel potatoes. The skipper said nothing, which in Dolan's experience counted as agreement.

Keep reading

On the third night the swell came up grey and the anchor chain jammed in the hawse pipe. Dolan went forward with a crowbar and the bow trying to shake him off like a dog with a rat. He hooked the links and swore at them, and beneath the hull something bumped twice, slow and deliberate, like a knuckle on a cabin door.

He looked over the rail. A fin cut the lamplight, dark as a slate roof, and turned in a wide circle as if reading the boat's name. Dolan put his bar down. He told the water, quite politely, that the chain was not his fault and never had been. The fin slid off into the black, unhurried, the way a man leaves a pub he has decided not to be thrown out of, and the links came free with a shriek that woke the whole crew.

At dawn the skipper found Dolan sitting on the hatch with his hand in his pocket. When asked, he only said the anchor finger had gone cold and the shark finger had not, and that a sensible man kept his luck where he could see it.