Black and grey traditional tattoo of a heart holding two clasped hands, flanked by roses and leaves across the upper chest and neck, with an owl tattoo below.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Heart, hands and roses choker tattoo

Traditional · Chest · Black and grey · Photo

A black and grey tattoo sits across the upper chest at the base of the neck, centred on a heart with two hands clasped inside it. Roses with shaded petals and leaves curve out on either side, and small dotted lines border the heart. Below, a larger grey owl with spread wings fills the lower chest, shown in softer shading.

Traditional Dotwork Chest Neck Heart Hand Rose Leaves Owl Wing

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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 owl had lost a wing in the Hull gale, so Mick sent me to the stores for a spare, and I came back with a box of offcuts and a tin of black enamel gone thick as treacle. My job that season was keeping the Waltzer and the Ghost Train looking like something people would pay to be frightened by, and nobody had told the owl it was retired.

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Pell Mackie ran the Golden Hand, a hook-a-duck and shooting gallery at the back of the field, and she wanted a heart painted on her gate. Not any heart. She wanted two hands clasped inside it, the way her nan had drawn them on a tea towel, with roses either side so the punters would look at the roses and not the price board. I did it in the mornings before the generators woke. I shaded the petals with a dry brush, grey over black, until they looked like they had been out in the rain a while.

On the last night of the season the owl's new wing went up on its pole, and Pell stood under it with a paper cone of chips, saying nothing for a long time. Then she said the hands were the wrong way round. I said they weren't, and she said her nan always put the left hand on top so the heart would know who was asking.

I checked the drawing in my bag. She was right. I repainted it at dawn, and when the lorries pulled out the gate read the way it had been meant to.