Fine black line drawing of a vertical looping design with dots at each end on a white background, shown as a tattoo design rather than on skin.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Looping vertical fine line design

Fine line · Black and grey · Flash

A single continuous black line forms a vertical design of stacked loops, figure-of-eight curves and a teardrop-shaped loop near the lower end. Small dots mark the top and bottom of the line. The drawing uses fine, even linework with no shading, set centrally on a plain white background.

Fine line Loop Line Swirl Dot Abstract

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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

Dad never tied a bowline without talking to it, and I picked that habit up the summer I first went out on the Marjorie Ann. Out past the Dogger, with the light turning the colour of wet slate, Skipper Hollis slapped the end of the trawl warp into my hands and told me to make it fast before the winch took the strain. My fingers were useless with cold. I kept losing the thread of the thing.

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The line lay across the deck in loops, one over another, figures of eight that crossed and recrossed like a wake behind a boat that couldn't decide where it was going. Hollis had me count them out loud. Four, then the teardrop bight near the bitter end, then the two little hitches he called the sparrows. Each time I lost my place he dabbed a fresh spot of tar on the rail so I'd know where I'd got to. There were two spots, one at each end, and nothing between them but the rope itself, fine as thread once you looked at it in the lamplight.

When the knot finally sat right, I stood back and watched the warp run out through the block, one unbroken line into the grey. Hollis didn't say well done. He just tapped the tar spot at the far end, the one that would go under last, and said the sea would read the knot before it read me. I didn't ask what he meant. Thirty years on, I still tie every loop with my lips moving, and I still check the tar before I trust the rope.