Close photograph of a small solid black heart tattoo on the heel of a bare foot, raised on a wooden floor.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Small black heart on the heel

Other · Black and grey · Photo

A bare foot is raised on its toes, showing the sole and heel, with a small solid black heart tattoo on the edge of the heel. The heart is filled in with flat black ink and has crisp edges. The soft, warm-toned photograph shows a second foot on the left and a wooden floor below, with a plain pale wall behind.

Other Heart Foot Heel

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 bosun had Ned Pardoe's boots off before the four o'clock bell, and the purser saw the mark before anyone else did. It sat on the back of his left heel, no bigger than a farthing, solid black and sharp at the edges like a seam stitched by a steady hand. Ink was dear aboard the Marigold, and no hand wasted a shilling on his skin, so the mate wanted to know who had held the needle.

Keep reading

Ned said it was done in a loft above a chandler's in Greenock, by a woman with her sleeves rolled to the elbow and a kettle always on the stove. He had paid her in tobacco and a promise to write from Valparaíso. The carpenter, Hollis, laughed and said a man could hardly be trusted to walk straight with a heart on his heel. Ned only pulled his stocking back on and said the deck was wet enough without him worrying about it.

The Marigold lay off Valparaíso for nine days waiting on a berth. Each morning the boys went ashore at low tide to dig for clams, and each morning they came back muddy to the knee and swearing at the cold. On the last day Hollis walked the strand alone and pressed his own bare heel into the wet sand beside Ned's prints, pressed it hard, and looked back at the two of them lying side by side. The tide came in before he had got halfway back to the boat, and by dusk the sand was smooth as a slate.