Close photo of a small black fine line wave tattoo on the side of a torso, just below a dark sweater pulled up.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Simple wave tattoo on the side ribs

Fine line · Ribs · Black and grey · Photo

A small, single black wave outline sits on the side of the torso, just below a dark knitted top that has been pulled up. The linework is thin and solid with no shading, and the ink is uniform black on skin. The tattoo is centred in the frame against a soft, blurred background of pale buildings and balconies.

Fine line Ribs Wave Sea Line art

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 gate at Carrow Keep had been rusted shut since my grandfather's time, so I climbed over it the way the gulls did, with more nerve than sense. Below the broken curtain wall the sea was doing what it always did, drawing one long line up the shingle and sliding it back again. Mam called it the Keep's breath. I called it homework, because she had given me a pencil and a sketchbook and told me to draw the same wave until I got it right.

Keep reading

I tried it on the windowsill of the old chapel, where the stone was smooth enough to hold charcoal. Every evening I came back and the tide had rubbed it out. The first week I was furious. By the second I had started to notice that no two waves were alike: one curled too early, one hung for a breath before it fell, one barely lifted at all. Mam said the sea had never once agreed to be drawn.

On the last Saturday before the surveyors came to fence the keep off for good, I sat on the chapel step with a tin of black ink and the nib pen Dad had left in the drawer. I did not copy anything. I let my hand rise, hang and drop the way the water did, and when I looked down the line was thin and sure, and it stayed.

The surveyors came on Monday and wrote their notes in the car. The next high tide scoured the shingle clean and took my chalk marks with it, but the little black curl in the back of my sketchbook, which I had gone over three times, is still exactly where I put it. I draw it every morning before the kettle boils, and the sea, grudgingly, has never once improved on it.