Black and grey fine line and dotwork sleeve on an upper arm and forearm, showing sailing boats, waves, swirling clouds and a small airliner.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Sailing boats, waves and airliner sleeve

Fine line · Upper arm · Black and grey · Photo

A full arm sleeve shows sailing boats with angular sails on rippling sea lines, rising to a mountain-like peak. Swirling cloud forms sit on the upper arm, with a small airliner flying near the shoulder. The work is done in fine black linework with dotwork shading on the sails and hills, in black and grey only.

Fine line Dotwork Upper arm Forearm Sailboat Wave Sea Cloud Airplane Mountain Sleeve

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The stamp will not sit straight, and the officer at Kessock Quay has already noticed. You lift the rubber, tap it again, and watch the harbour through the hut window, where three sailing boats are beating in over a grey chop, their sails cut sharp as paper against the cloud. Your own boat, the Marguerite, is tied up behind the fuel hut with her halyards slapping, and her papers have been read twice.

Keep reading

"Nine days out of Ardnish?" the officer asks, without looking up. "Nine days, since the squall off Rhenish took the jib." She wants to know what you carried and who you carried it for. You tell her salt, charts, a crate of tinned pears and a letter from a woman in Fallow Point who wants to know if her son is still alive. The officer writes down the pears. She does not write down the letter, and you are grateful.

Overhead a jet goes over, low and silver, climbing south toward a country where nobody has ever had to read the wind. The officer's eyes follow it for a moment longer than she needs to. "My brother flies that route," she says. "Says the sea is the only thing he misses, and he's never once been on it."

She hands back the passport. The stamp lands square this time, the ink bright and even. You step out onto the quay, where the swell is still lifting the boats and the gulls are still arguing over a dropped crust, and you find you are no longer sure which side of the line you have come from.