Fine line tattoo of a black anchor wrapped by a thin light blue rope, placed on the side of the torso.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Anchor with rope line on the side

Fine line · Ribs · Mixed · Photo

A single anchor is drawn in dark black ink with a slim, slightly tapered shaft and small flukes. A thin light blue line loops around it like a rope, forming a curl near the top and a tail at the bottom. The piece sits on smooth skin against a dark background, with the composition centred on the anchor.

Fine line Ribs Anchor Rope

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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 chandler's on Sallow Street shut at nine, but Matty Oakes still knocked on the glass at half eleven, a coil of blue line over his shoulder like a sleeping cat. I was closing the till in the laundrette next door, so I let him in through the back and he set the coil on my folding table and didn't say anything for a while. The street lamps buzzed outside. Somewhere past the docks a ship sounded its horn twice, as if it had forgotten the rest of the call.

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He unwrapped the anchor from a sheet of brown paper. It was small, black, its flukes sharp enough to snag a sleeve, and he had filed the shank smooth himself so it would sit in his palm without catching. He wanted the line measured to the distance between the iron bollard by the Kestrel and the second lamp post on the river wall. Forty-one feet, I told him, and he nodded as if I'd confirmed a debt. He said the anchor was the part that held, and the rope was the part he kept letting out, and he had never worked out which of those was him.

I measured it with my tape while he counted the loops under his breath. At the bollard he tied the first knot and pulled it tight, then stood back with his hands in his coat. By dawn the line lay in a slack curl on the wet stones, looping back on itself the way a question does, and the anchor sat on the bottom step where he had left it. Neither of us picked it up before the first van came along the quay.