Black and white line drawing of a piston and connecting rod decorated with three roses, a heart with a star and a flower motif, with no body placement shown.

Piston with roses and heart design

Black and grey · Flash

A bold black outline drawing of a piston and connecting rod, with a black heart containing a white star at the centre of the piston crown. Three roses sit at the base of the piston and two more flank the connecting rod, drawn with clean outlines and small details. The design is in solid black and white on a plain grey background, with no shading beyond the flat black fills.

Piston Rose Heart Star Flower

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 engine had stood in the walled garden at Hollin Farm since before anyone could remember, and it was Ada Brierley's task to keep it turning. Each dawn she greased its iron joints and let the water up from the well, and each dawn the roses along the south wall opened a little further, as though they had been waiting for the knock of the piston.

Keep reading

Her father had told her the engine had a heart. Set beneath its crown, where the steel met the sky, was a black heart with a white star in the middle, and he said that as long as the star shone the roses would keep their colour. Nobody in the village thought him foolish. They brought their cuttings to the wall and asked for a bloom to carry to a grave or a wedding, and Ada gave them one, and the engine ticked on.

One November the connecting rod began to sing a low note, and Ada knew the bearing was dry. She climbed the ladder with a can of oil in one hand and a rag in the other, and found the star gone grey with rust. She rubbed at it until her knuckles bled, and the metal warmed under her palm. The piston dropped, rose, and dropped again, and by morning the roses along the wall had flushed red through the frost.

The village said the garden had kept a bargain. Ada said only that the oil had been warm and the rag was clean. Every spring after that she polished the star before the first frost, and the roses came back to the wall, cut close and carried away, while the engine went on turning in the dark.