Black and grey pencil drawing of a sacred heart wrapped in a rosary, with a banner across the top, a cross and leaves below, in a traditional tattoo design style.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Sacred heart with rosary and cross drawing

Traditional · Black and grey · Flash

The drawing shows a heart with a flame-like flourish and a ribbon banner across its top, a rosary of beads hanging over its front, and a small cross and leaves at the base. The linework is bold and the heart is shaded with soft grey tones and dark accents. The design is shown in black and grey on a plain light background, centred on the subject.

Traditional Heart Rosary Cross Leaves Banner Flame

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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 lamp had to be finished before the Feast, and Mr Ashworth would not pay a single day beyond it. I soldered the last seam of the heart at half past four, while the gas in the yard was still hissing blue and the lads were shouting over the cart wheels outside. The tin was thin as a biscuit lid. I had beaten it over a bent spoon for three nights, and my knuckles were raw from the hammer.

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Father Dolan had asked for the flame to look as though it were climbing out of the top, and for a ribbon of cloud to run across the chest like a banner caught in wind. I gave him both. I burnished the wings of tin until the grey gleamed like rain on slate. Then I hung his rosary from the rim, forty beads of jet my sister had strung before she went to Manchester, and set the whole thing on the sill to dry.

On the morning of the Feast the sill was empty. The rosary lay coiled on the cobbles below, the lamp was gone, and there was a smudge of soot on the ledge the size of a child's palm. Ashworth stormed in at nine, shouting about his money. I said nothing. I was thinking of the flame, how it had looked when I first lit the wick, as though it wanted out of the metal.

Three weeks later a parcel came from Blackburn with no name on it. Inside was the lamp, dented on one side, and under it a folded card in my sister's hand: It was only ever going to a better place. Keep the beads. I wear the cross on a string now, and I have never once managed to make a flame look as though it was staying put.