Black and white photo of a fine line tattoo of a seated female figure with one arm raised, placed on the side of the ribs.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Fine line seated figure on the ribs

Fine line · Ribs · Black and grey · Photo

A single continuous black outline shows a seated female figure with one knee drawn up and an arm raised towards the head. The linework is even and thin, with no shading, and the figure sits against plain skin on the side of the torso. The black and white photograph is framed close, with the figure centred and the edge of a breast and an arm visible at the left.

Fine line Ribs Seated figure Outline Line art

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The rain had been drumming on the awning since seven, and by eleven the gutter along Chapel Row ran like a brown river past the fishmonger's. I sat on an upturned crate at the far end of the Saturday market with a sketchbook on my knee and a fountain pen I would not let anyone else touch. Business was poor, but Mr Dhillon from the gramophone stall had bought two drawings for a pound each just to keep my spirits up.

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I had one rule, set by my old tutor in Leeds: never lift the nib. A drawing should be a single line that starts at one point and wanders back to meet itself, or it isn't finished. So when the cobbler's daughter came under the awning, shaking out her hood, and asked if I could draw her grandmother, I said the old woman would have to sit still for as long as one breath and let me look at her properly. Ruth folded herself onto the crate with one knee pulled up and lifted a hand to push the wet hair from her face, as if she had done it a thousand times and was bored of being watched.

The pen travelled from her ankle up the shin, round the curve of the knee, along the bent arm and up to the fingers at her temple, and I never once let it leave the paper. When I turned the sketchbook around, Ruth studied it for a long time. Then she said it looked like someone who had finally stopped holding their breath. She paid me in coins, folded the page into her coat, and walked off through the puddles without an umbrella.

The rain stopped around noon. That evening I tore the page from the book and found the ink had pooled in one place near the knee, where the nib had caught and doubled back. It was the only lift in the whole drawing, and it was the part Ruth had looked at longest.