Solid black silhouette tattoo of a ballerina with arms raised on the outer ankle, beside a silver anklet with a peace sign charm.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Ballerina silhouette on an ankle

Ankle · Black and grey · Photo

A solid black silhouette of a ballerina in a poised pose, with one arm raised and the other extended, sits on the outer side of an ankle. The tattoo has smooth, filled black ink with no visible linework or shading, and the figure is set against bare skin. A silver chain anklet with a peace sign charm sits below it on a dark tiled floor.

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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

You learn the theatre's back lane by its sounds before its shapes. Bin lids clatter, a tram bell rings two streets off, and at half eleven the stage door bolt slides home. Tonight the lamp over the loading bay buzzes like a wasp, and you are on your knees with a stick of chalk, tracing the shadow a dancer threw onto the bricks at the last rehearsal.

Keep reading

Nobody asked you to. The company left for a tour of Leeds in March, the wardrobe mistress took the good scissors, and the dancer who had stood in that bright square, one arm raised and the other reaching for a door that was not there, went with them. What stayed was the silhouette, burned into the wall by the sodium glare, a black figure poised as if the next beat were still owed.

You fix it the way you fix anything, a line at a time. The chalk squeaks, and the lane fills with the small sounds of a city pretending to sleep. A night bus sighs at the corner. Somewhere a radio plays a brass band nobody asked for. Each time you finish, the shape looks a little less like a memory and a little more like a fact.

At one o'clock a woman with a dog stops to watch. She says the figure looks about to leap off the wall. You say it has been about to leap for years. She laughs, tugs the lead, and moves on. You stay kneeling a moment longer, brushing chalk from your palms and listening for the bolt to slide open again. It never does, so tomorrow you will come back and trace it once more.

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From the plentytattoo archive, uploaded by a user. Is this your work? Ask for credit or removal.