Black outline tattoo of a long-necked dinosaur with hatched shading and a small red heart, on the upper arm.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Dinosaur outline with red heart

Upper arm · Mixed · Photo

A long-necked dinosaur is drawn in a single black outline, with hatched lines filling the body and legs. A small solid red heart sits on the body, the only colour in the design. The tattoo is shown close up on pale skin against a plain background, with the tail extending to the left and the neck curving to the right.

Upper arm Dinosaur Heart

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Nell had been mate on the narrowboat Kestrel for three weeks when the crate came aboard at Hatton, too long for the hold and roped to the roof like a canoe. Her uncle Ray said it was a resin cast for a museum in Leicester, a long-necked beast that had to be at the loading dock by Friday or the man in the Volvo would have words.

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They got it down the Grand Union in a day and a half. Locks were slow work with a load that size. At Foxton, the lock-keeper leaned over the gate and whistled at the neck curling out of the packing straw. "That's a brontosaurus," he said. "My dad had one in a book. Bones all showing, like someone had drawn it in pen."

That night Nell sat on the cabin step with a biro and a pad of lock-keeper's forms, copying the thing from memory. She drew the outline in one long unbroken line, then filled the legs and ribs with short hatched strokes, each one like the slats of a garden gate. Ray came up behind her with a mug of tea and watched the pen reach the belly.

"You've forgotten the heart," he said.

"It's a skeleton."

"Skeletons have hearts, love. Somewhere under the stripes." He pulled the lid off his red marker, the one he used for marking lock depths, and dotted a small heart on the page where the body sagged. Nell let it stay. In the morning the crate went off on a lorry, and she kept the drawing in her coat pocket until it went soft at the folds.