Small black ink tree tattoo on the inside of an ankle, with two other people in jeans and boat shoes standing on rocks behind it.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Small black tree tattoo on an ankle

Ankle · Black and grey · Photo

A close photograph of a small black tattoo of a stylised tree on the outer ankle of a person wearing rolled jeans and brown boat shoes. The linework is simple and solid, with no shading, and the ink is black. Three people stand on a rocky outcrop above a wooded valley with houses in the distance, and the tattoo is the focal point in the lower left of the frame.

Ankle Tree

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

Dear Tom,

Keep reading

The fir you planted the spring you left is taller than the byre roof now, and I had to stand on the feed bin with the secateurs to take the dead leading shoot off it. Your father would have laughed. He never believed a thing grew unless he had measured it twice first.

The valley has gone white since Tuesday. You can see the Hartley place from the top field, where the snow has drifted against the wall, and the lights come on early now, one by one, like someone counting. I walked up there on Sunday with the dog and the old tarpaulin from the quarry men under my arm, meaning to take it down to the rocks where you used to sit. It blew off halfway and went skating over the stones, and I let it go.

I've been thinking about the way you drew that tree on the back of the feed invoice, all those branches stacked like the rungs of a ladder, and how you said a pine only needs to be simple to be right. I told you it looked like a child's drawing. I was wrong. It's the only thing on this farm that has kept its shape through the wet.

Come home for the New Year if the roads hold. The tree needs a proper star, and I've kept the old one in the tin under the stairs, wrapped in the newspaper from the year the bridge went. Bring the good boots. The ground by the gate is all ice, and I'd rather not lose you to it the way we nearly lost the ewes.

Love, Mum