Fine line black outline of a small elephant with its trunk raised, tattooed on the ankle.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Small elephant outline on an ankle

Fine line · Ankle · Black and grey · Photo

A small elephant facing left is drawn in a single thin black outline on the side of a pale foot. The linework is continuous and unshaded, with the trunk curled upwards and the legs and ear simply defined. The design sits on bare skin against a textured beige carpet, and the ink is the only colour in the frame.

Fine line Ankle Elephant

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dear Nell,

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The supply boat came in on Tuesday with the tide, and tucked in the crate beside the paraffin was a letter from Mrs Gardner in Ballantrae, which I have put under the tin of matches where the damp can't reach it. Your mother says you have been drawing again instead of doing your sums. Good. I have been drawing too, though not in the way the schoolmaster would like.

Yesterday the sea was flat as a plate and the gulls had gone quiet, so I sat on the step of the lamp room with a pencil and the back of an old tide table. I wanted to draw you an elephant, the sort painted on the side of the tea tin in the kitchen, but I found I could not lift the pencil once I had started. The line went down from the top of his head, round the great round back, and along the legs, and I let it wander the way the swell does, never stopping to look. When I reached the trunk I curled it up like a question mark, and that was when the light came on early, a good hour before dusk, and I had to go in and wind the clockwork.

Here is the odd part. When I came back out, the elephant was still there on the paper in one unbroken line, and for the life of me I could not find where it had started.

Mind the tin of matches. Tell your mother the cough is better. Tell the gulls I said hello.

Your loving Da