Black and grey brushstroke tattoo on the side of the ribs, showing two bold dry-brush strokes and small ink specks.

Black brushstroke tattoo on the ribs

Ribs · Black and grey · Photo

A photograph of a tattoo on the side of a torso, with a hand and silver ring visible at the upper left. The design is made of two bold, abstract brushstrokes in black ink, one upright with a dry, feathered edge and one curved below it, with fine dots and spatter nearby. The shading moves from dense black to soft grey, and the composition is set against plain skin and a pale window background.

Ribs Brushstroke Dot

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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 load the brush at half past eleven, when the street outside the old dye works has gone to sodium orange and nobody is left to tell you the sign is crooked. Mr Adeyemi wants the name of his bakery in black across the shutter by dawn, and he wants it dry before the first van turns into Tanner Lane. You have done this a hundred times. Your hand knows the weight of the ink better than your head does.

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The first stroke goes on like a door swinging shut, fast and dry at the top where the bristles run out of ink. You feel the edge fray and you let it. The second stroke is slower, a long curve that bends beneath the first like a swallow dipping under a telegraph wire. A spatter flicks off the tip when you lift, and you leave it, a handful of dots scattered across the metal like someone else's careless afternoon.

Around two, a bus grinds past and the shutter shivers. You step back, squint, and see that the marks are not letters at all. They are the shape a bird makes when it turns against the wind, and for a moment the sign is wrong, and you are glad of it. Mr Adeyemi will be furious. You tip the rest of the ink into the gutter and watch it run toward the drain, black as a river at night.

At six he arrives with a flask and reads the shutter in silence. 'Where's my name?' he says. 'Still in there,' you tell him. He tilts his head, then laughs, and asks what it would cost to have the bird painted on his shop window too. By seven the first loaves are out, and the street has a bird of its own, drying in the cold.