A small black anchor drawn in eyeliner on the back of a hand, shown in a collage with the pen, powder and other supplies used to make it.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Anchor drawn in eyeliner on a hand

Hand · Black and grey · Photo

A collage of four photographs shows a small black anchor drawn on the back of a hand, apparently with a permanent tattoo pen or liquid eyeliner rather than a machine tattoo. The anchor has simple solid linework with no shading, and the frames show the process, including a close-up of the pen being used and a dusting of white powder over the design. The palette is entirely black and white, and the supplies on the table are visible in the first frame.

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dear Tom,

Keep reading

Mum says you'll laugh at me, so I'll say it first. I drew an anchor on myself last Sunday, using the black permanent pen Mrs Pell keeps behind the counter for marking the lock keys. The chandler had run out of proper ink, and I was too stubborn to wait for the post.

It took three goes. The first wobbled like a drunk man on a gangplank, so I rubbed it out with a dab of spirit and tried again. The second I liked well enough. Then came Dad's old trick: a sprinkle of Johnson's baby powder over the wet lines so they set without smearing, and a puff to blow off the rest like flour off a board. The anchor came up sharp and black, its stock across the top and its two flukes curling out like a pair of cupped hands.

Now the joke. Narrowboats never drop anchor. We moor on pins and go nowhere in a hurry, and you'd struggle to find a barge on the Oxford canal that has ever seen salt water. But you said at the funeral that Dad would have wanted something to hold on to, and I thought, well, here is a thing to hold.

It's faded a little already, because pens don't last like ink. I'll likely go over it again tomorrow, and the day after, until it is mine to keep or until the rain takes it. Either way I'll send you a photo. Don't you dare laugh.

Love, Hen

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