Small black fine line cross tattoo on the side of a finger, with long pale nails visible on a hand.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Small black cross on a finger

Fine line · Hand · Black and grey · Photo

A close photograph of a hand with long pale nails, showing a small black cross tattooed on the side of one finger. The cross has thin, straight, evenly weighted lines in solid black ink. The tattoo sits near the centre of the frame against soft, out of focus clothing in muted tones.

Fine line Hand Cross

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

Morag Lusk had been ruling the soundings on the Skerrow chart since before the ferry stopped calling on Tuesdays, and her nib had never once blotted. "Hold still, Davie," she said, though the boy was only leaning over the table to watch the ink dry. Beyond the harbour office window the wind worked at the slates, and the sea past the breakwater had the grey sheen of an old pewter spoon.

Keep reading

Every wreck the island had lost since the lighthouse went dark was marked on that chart with a small black cross, two strokes drawn with a steady wrist and no flourish. The insurers in Stornoway wanted them plain. Davie asked why the Dorothea carried two crosses set close together, and Morag told him the second was for the man who had gone back into the surf for the first man's boots, and had not come out again.

He went quiet over that, the way children do when a grown person says something true without meaning to. Then he asked whether there were crosses for boats that had come home. Morag considered the question for longer than he expected. She reached for the fine pen, dipped it, and drew one more mark in the bottom margin, beside no name and no depth.

"That one's for the Ellen," she said. "She limped in on a Thursday with half a hull and a day's catch, and her skipper had the cheek to whistle the whole way up the slip." Davie looked at the little cross for a while, then at the window, where the Ellen's mooring rope lay coiled and dry on the quay. Morag capped the ink and wiped the nib clean.