Matching red bow tattoos with black outlines and a heart at the centre, sitting on both calves and seen from behind.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Red bow tattoos on both calves

Neo-trad · Calf · Colour · Photo

Two matching bow designs with a small heart at the centre of each knot sit on the lower legs, with ribbon tails trailing down toward the ankles. The bows have solid red fills, bold black outlines and dark shading that gives them a raised, dimensional look. The photo shows the back of both legs against a black leather surface, with red sneakers at the bottom of the frame.

Neo-trad Calf Bow Ribbon Heart

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

Mind that rope, love, it's older than your grandmother and twice as stubborn. Sit yourself on the hatch and I'll tell you how the Maud Ellen came by her red ribbons, because the lock-keepers still won't tell it straight, and I'm the last one left who saw it properly.

Keep reading

It was the summer of the high water at Ashby Lock, and Dolly Harker kept the gates with her father's cap on her head and her hair tied back in a red silk bow. Two bargemen were after her. Tom Pryce had the Maud Ellen and his brother Eli had the Kestrel, and being brothers made it no easier. So Dolly cut two lengths of red ribbon and tied a bow on each mooring line, pulling the loops tight so the knot made a little heart in the middle. She said, whichever of you brings his line back with the bow still on it, I'll walk you up the towpath on Sunday.

They went down the cut on the Monday with the wind getting up. Eli took the Kestrel through the bridge hole too fast, the ribbon caught on a snag, and it tore clean away. Tom came back with his bow still knotted, both tails trailing in the brown water like weed. Dolly walked him up the towpath, and he never once spoke of his brother's ribbon, which he kept folded in his coat until the day he died.

So every Sunday after, Dolly came down to the basin and retied that heart on the Maud Ellen's line, and some say she never married at all. If you lean over the side at Ashby now, you'll see two red tails drifting toward the gates, and that's the bit they don't tell on the tourist boats.