Close-up of a small fine line tattoo of a single curling wave on the inner wrist and forearm, in dark ink.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Fine line wave on a wrist

Fine line · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

A small, single-line tattoo of a curling wave sits on the inner wrist, with the curl pointing towards the thumb side of the arm. The linework is thin and even, and the ink appears dark blue or black with no shading. The hand is visible at the top of the frame against a white sheet and a dark teal fabric.

Fine line Forearm Wave

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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

Sit down, sit, the lamp has only the one wick left and I'll not waste it on you standing. You want the story of the thin blue wave? Everybody wants that one. Listen close, because I tell it only once a night and the tide is not waiting.

Keep reading

Back when the trams still ground up Crooked Hill in Saltmarrow, there was a girl called Nell Ashdown who mended nets for her uncle and drew on everything. Chalk on the slipway, soot on the bakery window, once on the sleeve of the harbour master, who did not thank her for it. She had one rule. She never lifted the pen. A wave, she said, is a single breath, and you cannot stop a breath halfway through to say something clever.

The winter the fog came in off the estuary and stayed nine days, her brother Cal went out after a dinghy seen drifting past the breakwater. The bells rang and rang. Nell sat on the cold step of the chandler's with a biro and drew one long curl on the inside of her wrist, then another, then another, until the ink was the only thing she trusted. On the tenth morning the fog lifted like a sheet off a bed, and there was Cal on the breakwater, soaked and cursing the wind, the dinghy tied fast behind him.

Nell never did lift the pen after that. She drew the wave small, always curling toward her thumb, toward the hand that had held the rope. Mind your step on the way out, friend. The tide turns at the bottom of the hill, and so does every good story.