Fine line tattoo of a heartbeat trace ending in a paw print on the inner wrist, with a small pink-shaded heart at the start.

Heartbeat line with heart and paw on a wrist

Fine line · Forearm · Mixed · Photo

A thin black heartbeat trace runs across the inner wrist, starting from a small heart partly filled with pink and ending in a paw print with dark shading on the pad and outlined toes. The linework is fine and even, with the pink shading the only colour in the design. The tattoo is centred on a softly lit, slightly blurred background of skin and a blue surface.

Fine line Forearm Heartbeat Heart Paw print Line

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

You learn the river by its noises before you learn its names. The barge Maudlin knocks gently against her moorings below Clanfield Lock, and the old collie Pip sleeps across the hatch boards with one ear turned toward the water. Your uncle Alf claimed she could hear a gate opening three bends off. You never doubted him, though you doubted most things he said about engines.

Keep reading

The winter the ice came down from the weir, Pip stopped climbing the gangplank. You carried her up each morning and sat beside her each night with your palm flat on her ribs, counting. Forty beats to the minute, then fifty, then a flutter you could no longer count at all. The vet in the market town clipped a grey strip of paper from his machine and folded it into your hand. It was a wavering line with peaks like the hills behind the village, and it was the most honest thing anyone gave you that year.

In March you untied the Maudlin at first light and let her drift with the current toward the lock. No one else was about. The gates groaned open and the water poured through, and you stood at the tiller with the paper pinned under your thumb. You did not cry. You read the peaks aloud, slowly, the way Alf used to read the weather, and the river took each one and carried it downstream.

When the last gate closed behind you, you tucked the strip into the tin with the spare fuses and the tide-worn compass. Some mornings you still hear a soft thump against the hull and turn, half expecting a grey nose over the gunwale. Instead there is only the water, knocking gently, keeping its own time.