A cross drawn in loose, splattered black ink strokes on a white background, shown as a tattoo design with no body placement visible.

Brushed black ink cross design

Black and grey · Flash

A standalone Latin-style cross is drawn in bold black ink with dragging, feathered brush strokes. The vertical stroke is darker and heavier than the horizontal arms, which fade into thin streaks and fine spatter. The image is monochrome on a plain white background with no skin or body visible.

Cross

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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

Mo Crane had been up since four, scraping old lettering off the side of the ticket booth while the wind came off the fens and flung a tarpaulin across the field. By noon the rides were already in the lorries. Only the booth was left, its paint lifting like scabs, and Mo's brushes standing in a jam jar of turps.

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The cross on the back of the generator shed had been there longer than anyone could say. A rigger called Teddy Vance had put it up with a stiff brush and a tin of black gloss the winter Mo joined, and he died in a caravan fire in Lincoln before the next season. Nobody had touched it since. The council inspector wanted the shed clean for the Thursday site, though, so Mo thinned her ink, loaded a flat brush, and dragged the first arm out hard, lifting early the way Teddy had shown her, so the ends frayed into dry streaks.

The upright came out heavier, pooling black at the foot where she leaned into it. She flicked the spatter off the bristles with two fingers and watched it land on the gravel like the first drops of rain. Her daughter Ida, nine years old and perched on an upturned crate with a bag of chips, asked why Teddy's crosses were always so untidy. Mo said he never made anything tidy, only true to the wrist.

Ida studied it with her chin in her hand. It looks like someone was trying to get out of the picture, she said. Mo didn't answer. She signed the corner with her initials, capped the jar, and went to find the lorry keys, the wet cross drying behind her in the thin March light.