Two-panel photo showing a small black outline heart tattoo on the inner forearm and a black scorpion tattoo on skin, with a coin beside it for scale.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Heart outline and scorpion on forearm

Fine line · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

The left panel shows a small, thin black outline of a heart on the inner wrist or forearm, with clean, even linework and no shading. The right panel shows a larger scorpion in black ink with bold outlines and grey shading on the body and tail, placed beside a coin for scale. Both tattoos are black and grey against plain skin, with a simple two-panel layout.

Fine line Forearm Heart Scorpion Coin

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

The ferry leaves Corran Hafn at six, and you are the only passenger who has ever paid in silver. Old Mairi takes the coin between two fingers, weighs it, and says the king's head is facing the wrong way, which is what she says when she means the sea is restless. You tuck the ticket into your coat and watch the harbour wall shrink behind the spray.

Keep reading

Halfway across, something moves under the bench. It is a scorpion, dark as wet slate, its tail curled like a question mark over its back. You freeze, and so does it. Mairi says it came over in a crate of Spanish lemons and has been living on the sugar sacks since March. She says the island has never had a sting-death, only a great many people who think they have been stung. Your sister used to say the same thing about her heart, that it was bruised, not broken, and she drew one on the back of a tide chart before she left for the mainland. You still have that chart folded in the lining of your coat.

The scorpion climbs the rail and stops at the coin, which you have set on the bench to keep the wind off your ticket. It taps the silver with one claw, twice, the way a clerk checks a receipt. Then it settles in the shadow of the coin and does not move again.

At the pier Mairi lifts the coin, and the scorpion comes with it, clinging to the milled edge as though it has paid its own fare. She holds it up to the grey light and grins with one gap in her teeth. Keep the change, she says, and you cannot tell whether she means the coin or the scorpion.