Black and grey fine line tattoo of two outlined birds forming a heart shape, centred on the upper back.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Outlined birds forming a heart on upper back

Fine line · Back · Black and grey · Photo

A photograph of the upper back of a person with their hair pinned up, shown from behind. A small tattoo sits at the centre of the back, drawn as two outlined bird shapes whose heads and wings meet to form the outline of a heart. The linework is thin and uniform with no shading, in black ink on pale skin, and the tattoo is framed by bra straps against a dark background.

Fine line Back Bird Heart Outline

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 two doves had been fighting over the same crust of bread since the grain ships came in, and by the time Hesper reached the warehouse wall at Ostia, one had its wings spread wide across the other's back. She set down her basket of wax tablets and waited. The letter from her brother in Alexandria was sealed twice and warm from the sun in her satchel, and she had read it on the ferry until the ink smudged. Demetrios was not coming home for the harvest festival. He was staying to marry a glassblower's daughter with a laugh like a broken bell, and he wrote that he hoped Hesper would forgive him for not asking first.

Keep reading

She did not know if she forgave him. She knew only that the doves had stopped fighting. The one on top folded its wings and stepped aside, and the other shook out its feathers and walked three careful paces toward it. They stood with their heads bent together, and where their wings curved in and their necks arched, the two grey shapes made the outline of a heart against the pale plaster.

Hesper laughed, sharp and surprised, and a passing carter turned to stare at her. She pressed the letter flat against her knee and wrote her reply on the back of the seal in quick strokes: Come and see the doves, they have settled it. She did not say who they were meant to be.

When she looked up again, one of the birds had left a single grey feather on the wall beside her basket, and she tucked it into the letter before she sealed it.