Pencil sketch of a mermaid with long flowing hair and a scalloped shell tail, drawn on a sketchbook page, suitable as a fine line tattoo design.

Mermaid with shell tail sketch

Fine line · Black and grey · Flash

A pencil outline drawing of a mermaid arching backwards, with long hair swirling out in curled, wave-like strands. Her tail curves down and ends in a large fan-shaped scalloped shell with ruffled edges. The linework is light and fairly fine, with a little soft shading at the shoulder and hip, and the figure sits in the centre of an open sketchbook page.

Fine line Mermaid Shell Hair Tail Sketch Wave

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 have been drawing her in the margins of the harbour ledger since the spring, and Mr Penhale has stopped scolding you for it, which tells you he has seen her too. Her hair rises over the page like a wave that has forgotten to break, and her tail ends in a fan of scallop shell, ruffled at the edge where the gulls have pecked it. Nobody in Polwithen will say who she is meant to be. The old women on the slipway call her nobody's daughter, only the sea wearing a face to keep the boats honest.

Keep reading

By the second week of June the drawings had begun to disagree with you. A line you had left straight was bowed the next morning, and a curl you had finished at the tip had grown another loop overnight. Mr Penhale held the ledger to the window, squinted, and blamed the damp. You did not argue. That evening you took it down to the Lowenna Star, because the crew needed a man who could read tides and you had never once been seasick.

Past the breakwater the wind turned and combed the water flat. Something pale kept pace under the hull, and when you leaned over the rail a fan of shell broke the surface, patient and ruffled, with hair streaming out from it like kelp. You pressed your palm onto the ledger to keep the pages still. They were already wet through, every line gone soft and dark, as if someone had traced them again from underneath.

They found the Lowenna Star the next morning, drifting with her oars shipped. The ledger lay dry on the thwart, open at the last drawing: a mermaid arched backwards, looking up at a small figure at the edge of the page. You had only drawn that figure in pencil, so there is still time to rub it out.