Black and grey fine line tattoo of a horseshoe with a heart of delicate geometric lines inside it, on the forearm.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Horseshoe and geometric heart on a forearm

Fine line · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

A shaded horseshoe sits in a U shape, with a small ornamental pattern at its base and nail holes drawn along its edge. Inside the curve, a heart is built from fine, overlapping linework with dotted points and flowing arcs. The piece is rendered in black ink and grey tones against pale skin, with the horseshoe carrying most of the shading and the heart kept light and open.

Fine line Geometric Forearm Horseshoe Heart Geometric line Dot

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 mare in bay three has thrown her near fore again, so you are working by the forge lamp while the hab-ring dims for night cycle. You heat the iron until it goes the colour of marmalade and beat it on the anvil the way your grandmother taught you, every nail hole punched cold along the outer edge. The ship's air is too thin for the old pins to bite without them.

Keep reading

Dacre, the navigator's boy, leans on the rail and asks why anyone still bothers with shoes when the deck plates pull on magnetic boots. You tell him the plates are for drones. A horse has to walk on something that remembers soil, and this one remembers the paddock at Exmoor where her dam was foaled, which is more than most of the crew can say. He laughs and calls it sentimental. Then the lift opens and the star chart unrolls across the bulkhead, and he goes quiet, because the lines on it are all arcs and dots, a pattern that looks like someone trying to draw a heart with a compass.

You fit the shoe, drive the last nail, and tap the hoof twice with the flat of the hammer. The mare shifts her weight and blows through her nose, the way they do when a thing finally sits right. Dacre traces a dotted curve on the chart with a greasy finger and asks what the shape is meant to be. You tell him it is the place where two orbits agreed to share a path. He asks whether that is a good thing. You hang the spent shoe above the stall door, open end up, and tell him luck only stays put if you give it somewhere to pool.