Six black line drawings of ornamental sacred hearts, some with flames, rays and roses, laid out on tracing paper as tattoo flash designs.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Sacred heart flash designs on tracing paper

Dotwork · Black and grey · Flash

A sheet of six hand-drawn tattoo designs on semi-transparent tracing paper, mostly sacred hearts with flames, radiating rays, dotted borders and scrolling ornament. Some designs include rose clusters and mandala-like patterns, and the linework is bold and even. The drawings are in black ink on pale paper and are arranged loosely across the frame with no body or skin visible.

Dotwork Botanical Flame Rose Ornament Mandala Sunburst Scroll Dot Flash sheet

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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

The stencil man in Carrow Street had a rule about tracing paper: you drew the heart first and the flames second, because a flame with nothing to keep it burning looked like a mistake. Mrs Quested had told him that was nonsense, and he had told her that in thirty-one years nobody had come back complaining about a heart that held still. So when the girl from the laundry came in with a torn photograph of her mother's wedding ring and asked for something that would not fade, he sat her down under the lamp and began with the outline, the careful double line, then the dots that ran around it like beads on a rosary.

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She watched him work and talked about the ring. It had been her grandmother's, sold to pay for a funeral, and she wanted the rays spread out behind the heart the way the old saints were painted, because her grandmother had always said the sun came up for the people who did the sorting. He did not argue. He put the sunburst in fine and even, one ray for every week of a year he did not ask about, and he let the scrolls curl where the paper wanted them to curl.

When it was finished he held the sheet up to the window, so the light came through both layers at once and the ink looked like it was floating. The girl leaned in and laughed, a short surprised sound, and said the flames looked as though they were trying to get out. He told her that was what flames were for. She took the drawing home folded inside her coat, and the stencil man pinned the spare sheets back on the wall, six hearts in a loose row, and went to put the kettle on.