Small colour tattoo of a hot air balloon with a zigzag and dot pattern on the ankle, drawn in fine black linework.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Hot air balloon on an ankle

Fine line · Ankle · Colour · Photo

A small hot air balloon sits on the ankle, its envelope filled with green, teal, orange and dark zigzag bands with dotted motifs. Fine black lines outline the balloon and draw the suspension ropes beneath the basket. Rolled denim, white sneakers and a bookshelf fill the background.

Fine line Geometric Ankle Hot air balloon Balloon Zigzag Pattern Dot Basket Rope

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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, the lot of you, and mind the dog. You want to hear about the balloon that came down on the Tanami road the summer the rain forgot us? Fine. Pour me some of that tea, though it's gone cold, and I'll tell it the way my father told it to me, with my hands doing the work.

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It came in low over the saltbush at the hour when the heat stops pressing and the light goes the colour of weak lemonade. The envelope was striped like a painted egg: green and teal at the top, then bands of orange and dark zigzags running round its belly like the teeth of a saw, with little dotted seeds marching between them. Beneath it the basket swung on ropes as fine as cobweb, and every rope was singing in the wind. A woman leaned over the rim in a hat that had seen better decades and shouted that she was looking for the salt lakes and had run out of morning.

The Ferrier boy was eight and had nothing to do but hold a bucket of water for the petrol pump. He ran out with it anyway. She threw him the trailing rope and told him to wrap it twice round the post and not to be a hero about it. He wrapped it three times. Then the wind swung round from the east, the balloon lifted, and the boy went up with it, two steps off the ground, before the post groaned and his boots found the dirt again.

The woman laughed the whole way up and didn't come back down. The rope is still on that post, bleached white and frayed to the thickness of a bootlace. When the evenings are clear you can look east and see a little striped speck over the dunes, catching the last sun on its dots like loose coins. That's where your grandmother's favourite songs came from, if you're wondering. Now eat your sweets before the dog gets them.