Fine line black tattoo of an anchor with a dotted line leading to a flock of birds across the shoulder and collarbone.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Anchor with dotted line and birds on collarbone

Fine line · Shoulder · Black and grey · Photo

A close crop of a woman's upper chest and shoulder shows a black tattoo of an anchor on the collarbone, with a dotted line curving upwards from it. A flock of small birds in flight continues across the shoulder towards the top of the arm. The linework is thin and mostly solid black, set against lightly lit skin with a soft, cool tone.

Fine line Shoulder Chest Anchor Bird Dotted line Flight

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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

Sit nearer the lamp, you, so I can see whether you're listening or only waiting for the kettle. My grandmother told this on the quay at Saltmarrow the winter the tide stopped coming back in, and she told it with her hands, the way you'd drop something heavy.

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There was a rope-maker's girl called Ida Scathelock who kept forty carrier gulls in a loft above the chandlery. Every morning she fed them, and every morning she counted them out through the window, one, two, up to thirty-nine, because the fortieth had flown east in the spring and never come back. The old harbourmaster said the iron anchor of the Merrowe was the only thing holding the town to its stone. Nothing leaves without its anchor, he said, and nothing drifts home.

But the gulls had been returning from the far islands with news that the sun still rose on dry ground out there, and they came in a long broken line, dot after dot, straight across the grey water. Ida went down to the slipway on the last spring tide with a file, a hacksaw and her grandmother's knife. She cut the shackle free, and the iron went down into the dark with a sound like a door shutting.

The town shouted. The Merrowe lifted on the slack water and turned her bow toward the birds. Ida stood on the slipway until the last grey wing was a fleck above the swell, and that is why, when you see birds going out to sea, you should always ask who gave up the anchor for them.