Black and grey photo of small eye tattoos on the back of a hand, on a finger and near the wrist, in a fine line style.

Small eye tattoos on hands

Fine line · Hand · Black and grey · Photo

Three small eye designs are shown, one on the side of a finger, one on another finger and one near the wrist of a hand held close to the camera. Each eye has a central dot, a pointed almond outline and short radiating lines, drawn in clean black linework with little shading. The image is black and white, with the hands set against a dark background and the tattoos placed toward the centre of the frame.

Fine line Hand Eye Arrow Sun rays

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

My grandfather never let anyone paint the rays before the eye was dry, and he never let anyone draw more than eight. Eight was for the sun, he said, and nine was for the sea, which took what it was offered and then wanted another. I learned the almond first, a pointed lid pulled tight at both corners, then the black dot in the centre, which he insisted must sit a fraction off true so the eye would look at you and not through you.

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We worked on the slipway at Scarra with the boats hauled up on rollers and the tin of enamel warming on a paraffin stove. The eyes went on the bows, on the oar blades, on the lintel above the net loft. Every spring the fleet came back to them, or so the old men said, and I believed it because I was nine and because the paint smelled like the inside of the chapel.

The March I was fourteen, the Mary Ellen went out under a sky the colour of wet slate and did not come back by dark. Grandfather sat on the harbour wall with his hands between his knees. I took the brush and the last of the tin and painted an eye on the stone at the top of the steps, small as a thumbprint. Then I counted my rays, eight, and counted them again.

At first light the lamp on the point had gone pale against a grey that was only beginning to thin, and there they were, four black hulls nosing round the headland with the sun coming up behind them. The eye on the stone caught the first of it. Grandfather came down the steps without his stick, touched the paint with one finger to see if it had dried, and said nothing, which from him was thanks.