Fine line black cross tattoo, about the size of a fingernail, on the inner wrist of a hand resting on a brightly coloured traditional-style backdrop.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Small cross tattoo on the inner wrist

Fine line · Hand · Black and grey · Photo

A hand is shown from the inner wrist upwards, with a small black cross tattooed on the wrist crease. The cross has thin, even linework with no shading, and it sits near the centre of the frame. The background is a busy, colourful traditional-style design in red, green, yellow and purple, which contrasts with the single dark ink mark.

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

The Marine Ballroom at Shellhaven smelled of Brylcreem, wet wool and the sea, and on Saturdays I ran the cloakroom from a hatch beside the fire door. Ruth Penhale had taught me the ticket system in one afternoon: brass tokens, a numbered hook for every coat, and never a pair of gloves handed back to the wrong man. I was nineteen and thought I knew everything about a room full of strangers.

Keep reading

Danny Quill came in every Saturday from October, always late, always in a shirt buttoned to the wrist. He never danced with the girls who waited by the bandstand. He leaned on my hatch while the band worked through its Glenn Miller, and once he pushed his cuff back to fish out a sixpence, and I saw a small black cross inked on the inside of his wrist. It was no bigger than a grain of rice, drawn so plainly it looked like a stitch. Behind him the wall was painted with the hall's old mural of sailors and sea serpents in reds, greens and mustard, and that one dark mark seemed to hold the whole loud picture still.

He told me a barber in Gravesend had done it with a sewing needle and a bottle of ink, on a bet he lost to his brother. I said it was the worst tattoo I had ever heard of. He laughed, the band slid into something slow, and for three songs he kept his cuff pushed up while he waited for his coat.

The last Saturday of the season he came to the hatch without a ticket. He just held out his hand, palm up, the cross turned towards me. I took the scarf he had left behind in March from under the counter and wrapped it round his wrist, and he went out into the rain without asking for it back.