Fine line black tattoo of a city skyline outline across the side of a finger, held up against a blue sky and buildings.

Skyline line tattoo on a finger

Fine line · Hand · Black and grey · Photo

A hand is raised in a V shape, showing a thin black tattoo of a jagged skyline outline across the side of the index finger. The single continuous line rises and falls in stepped peaks, with one taller spire near the centre, and it is crisp and even. The blurred city skyline behind, under a clear blue sky, echoes the tattoo, and the pale pink nails are visible in the foreground.

Fine line Hand Skyline City Line Building Spire

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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

You can't lift the pen, Teddy, that's the whole trick. My father taught me on the back of a fare ledger at the ferry terminal, on a Sunday when the gulls were being bad-tempered. Trace the ridge of the town in one go, he said. Rise where the roofs rise, drop where the gaps are, and never let the nib leave the paper, or the city gets to pretend it wasn't there.

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I did it every morning for thirty-one years from the same bench above Lower Pier. The tall one in the middle was the Mercantile Bank's copper spire, all ribs and verdigris, with a jackdaw that roosted on the weathercock and swore at me when I got too close. Then the council wanted glass, and the glass went up in a single season, and I kept drawing the old line with my eyes shut because my hand knew it better than the town did.

Last month I climbed up to the bench and the line wouldn't close. Three towers had been knocked down for a car park and a wider road, and the spire had a crane leaning on it like a sulking dog. I sat with the pen hovering over the paper for the best part of an hour, the gulls gone quiet for once. Then I drew the new skyline, rough and ugly as a broken comb, and carried on from the highest point I could still make out.

Your nan would have called it cheating. I think it's the only honest thing I've ever made. Come up on Saturday and bring the good pen, and we'll see how far it goes before we have to start again.