Fine line black ink tattoo of a mountain outline with a sunburst on the ankle, beside a black and yellow cord anklet.

Mountain line and sun tattoo on an ankle

Fine line · Ankle · Black and grey · Photo

The photograph shows a fine black outline of a mountain ridge that ends in a small sun with radiating rays at its right edge. The linework is thin and even, with no shading, and the design is in solid black ink against pale skin. The composition is close and angled across the ankle, with a black and yellow cord anklet with a dreamcatcher charm above the tattoo.

Fine line Ankle Mountain Mountain range Sun Sunburst Anklet

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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

You have danced until the fiddler's bow is squeaking and the hall smells of wet wool and spilt cider. Ruth Calloway, who runs the post office, has stopped sending you looks across the floor because she knows you will not dance with anyone else tonight. The tin roof ticks as it cools. Beyond the high windows the dark still sits thick over Carn Dubh, the ridge you have watched every morning from the back step of your mother's croft.

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Dougie Rennie calls the last set, a slow reel nobody dances properly. Your partner is Isla Fenwick, who came up from Edinburgh in June to paint the kirk and stayed through the hay. She says the ridge looks like a sleeping animal. You tell her it is only rock. She laughs and says that is exactly what she meant.

When the doors open at half four, the cold comes in like a dog that has been waiting outside. You walk her to the gate. The hill is turning from black to iron grey, and along its spine a thin line of light is rising, the way a pencil line appears when someone is deciding where the sun should go. She stops. You watch her count the rays as the sun clears the crest, eight of them, spread like fingers on a steamed window.

She says she will paint it. You say you know, because she has already sketched it on the back of a raffle ticket. Then the sun breaks loose from the ridge and the whole glen goes gold, and neither of you speaks for the length of a breath. The last thing you hear is Dougie shutting the hall door behind him, and the fiddle case clicking closed.