Black and grey dotwork fern frond tattoo curling down the outer side of an ankle and onto the foot.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Fern frond tattoo on a foot

Dotwork · Ankle · Black and grey · Photo

A curved fern frond runs diagonally from the top of the outer ankle down towards the foot, with a spiralled base at the lower end. The leaflets are outlined in dark ink and filled with rows of small dots, with lighter skin showing between the strokes. The tattoo is shown in black and grey against a plain dark background.

Dotwork Botanical Ankle Fern Frond Spiral Dot Leaf

Find an artist for this

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

Nobody in Saltmarket Quay walked the wet stairs after the bells, but Ada Pell had two sons on the far side of the river and no coin for a cab. She went down with a lantern and the paper map her father had drawn for the fishing boats. Along its edge ran a curled frond with dots inked down each leaf, which the old hands called the way-leaves.

Keep reading

At the first bridge the gas lamps went out one by one, as they did when the lamplighters slept. Ada stopped and held the map to the light, then looked at the fern growing green from the wall beside her. The spiral at its root turned the same way as the dots. Follow the dots, her mother had said. Count them, and never count past nine.

She counted nine on the iron steps and nine again under a dripping arch, where a man in a grey coat sat on a crate with his hat over his face. He lifted the brim when her lantern touched him and asked what a girl wanted with the river at that hour. She told him about the boys. He gave her a cold pie from his pocket and pointed down the slip, where the water lay black and shining like a dropped coin.

At the bottom the two boys sat in the stern of a tarred skiff, bailing with their hands and grinning as if she were the one who had come late. Ada took the oar. When the sky greyed over the rooftops she unfolded the map again. The dots had run out at the edge of the paper, and the frond had curled back on itself into a spiral. The boys swore ever after that the river had let them go on purpose.