Black and grey sailing ship on rough waves tattooed on the outer thigh, with a dotted line running down to a small anchor, in blackwork and dotwork style.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Sailing ship and anchor on a thigh

Blackwork · Thigh · Black and grey · Photo

A three-masted sailing ship with fully set sails sits above a band of stylised, curling waves on the outer thigh. A fine dotted line descends from the waves to a small anchor near the knee. The ship is outlined in solid black with hatched sails, while the sea uses fine line work and stippled shading, and the whole design is in black and grey ink against plain skin.

Blackwork Dotwork Thigh Ship Sailing ship Sail Wave Sea Anchor Dotted line

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 fair packed up at Dudley on a Sunday, which is the only day my father ever lost his temper with the ride. He stood on the lorry ramp with a spanner in one hand and a sail over his shoulder, shouting at the canvas to behave. The Marigold had three masts, a painted hull and sails he had hung himself, each one hatched in black so the lamps caught the lines like rain. Nobody else on the fair cared about her. I did.

Keep reading

The anchor came off in the spring. It was a cast-iron thing the size of a loaf, bolted under the bow for the children to swing from, and when the bolt sheared it went over the side of the canal bank and into the black water below Stourbridge. I went in after it with a torch in my teeth. I found the chain, a string of dotted links running off into silt, and I held on until my fingers stopped being fingers.

Dad didn't ask. He sat on the step of the caravan with his tea going cold and watched me dry the links on an old towel. When we reached Wolverhampton he had welded a smaller anchor, and he hung it from the same bolt holes. 'She needs something to hold her down,' he said, which was as near as he ever came to saying sorry for shouting.

On the first night of the new season the sails filled with lamplight and the children screamed as the boat swung out over the crowd. I looked down at the lad below, dropping a coin in the tray, and the new anchor swung on its chain above him, going nowhere at all. I thought about the silt, and how far down the chain had gone before my hands found it.