Black line drawing of a ribcage with two hands with long nails covering the centre of the chest, shown as a tattoo design on a white background.

Ribcage with hands over the chest

Black and grey · Flash

The drawing shows a ribcage with the ribs outlined in even black linework. Two hands with long dark nails cover the centre of the chest, one from each side. It is plain black ink on a white background, with no shading or colour.

Ribcage Hand Ribs Bone Anatomy

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 frames went up in March, one bent oak rib after another, and by April Ada Penhallow could stand inside the Mary Jane and see daylight through her whole length. Her father had built nineteen boats in the yard at Lanrick and never once let her hold the adze. She held the lamp instead, and she counted the frames aloud, because he said a builder who lost count lost the boat.

Keep reading

That autumn eleven boats went out from the harbour after the pilchards. Ten came back in the week of the gale. The Kittiwake did not, and neither did Tom Greer, who had promised to plank the Mary Jane before Christmas. The slip stayed quiet. Gulls walked along the bare frames, rain collected in the cradle where the keel should have been, and nobody in the village would say aloud what the boat had become.

Ada went down on a Sunday with a tin of pitch and her father's old gloves, which were too big. She climbed in through the gap at the stern and sat where the hold would be. The ribs curved up around her like the bars of a cage someone had left open. She laid her hands over the middle of them, one from either side, the way her mother used to hold a hot loaf against her chest to see if it was ready.

The wind came off the water and passed through the frames, and they gave out a low note, like a breath held too long and finally let go. Ada kept her hands where they were. She told the boat, quietly, that the oak was seasoned, that the planks were coming, and that she would hold the lamp and count every one. Then she picked up the adze and began.