Close view of a hand resting palm down on white fabric, with a red dripping band tattoo wrapped around the middle joint of the ring finger.

Dripping red band on a ring finger

Hand · Colour · Photo

A photograph of a hand resting palm down on a white cloth, with fingers spread and pale pink nails. A solid red band sits around the middle section of the ring finger, with drips running down toward the knuckle. The ink is a single flat red with crisp edges, and the soft natural daylight keeps the composition simple and uncluttered.

Hand Band Drip Ring Finger

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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 wax had gone too hot again, and Ada Strang watched it slide over the lip of the tin and run down the side of the pot in a slow red tongue. Outside the sorting office on Unst the wind was already pulling at the shutters. The Lerwick boat was due by four, and the mail sacks for the Harbour Board were still unstitched on the counter.

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She had sealed the Board's envelopes for eleven winters with the brass stamp her father left her, a ship's anchor worn nearly smooth. Each seal took two drops, one to hold the flap and one to catch the stamp, and the trick was lifting the stamp before the second drop set. Her hands knew it. Her mind kept drifting to the bead that had run past the seal that morning and hardened into a crooked tail down the page.

The Lerwick boat came in early, half swamped, carrying a stranger in a yellow oilskin who asked for a parcel addressed to nobody. Ada turned it over. The label was in her father's hand and dated the year before he drowned. She had never sent it. Inside was a second stamp, small as a thimble, and a note that read only: wax keeps where ink runs.

She did not go out to meet the stranger. She heated the wax until it bled dark, let it bead and run in a thick red band around the handle of her pen, the way her father used to mark his tools, and then she sealed the Board's letters one by one and let the wind have the rest.