Fine line black tattoo of a small cartoon animal on the top of a foot, with purple suede heels and a white fur rug in the background.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Small line drawing animal on the top of a foot

Fine line · Other · Black and grey · Photo

A small, simple black outline of an animal, possibly a bird or a duck, sits on the top of a bare foot. The linework is thin and uniform with no shading, and the design is in black ink only. The foot rests on a white fur rug beside purple suede heels, with a hand with painted nails visible at the lower edge.

Fine line Other Line drawing Outline Heel

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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

You find the duckling in the flour bin on the third morning out of Grimsby, a yellow ball of fluff that has clearly been dozing against a sack of self-raising since the tide turned. The cook's mate wants it over the side. You, sixty years old and fed on tinned peaches and spite for most of your working life, say nothing and set a saucer of porridge oats on the chart table instead.

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Nobody aboard the Brightwater knows where it came from. The bosun swears it was in the forward hold with the Dutch cheese. By the fourth day it has learned the galley's route: the sink, the hatch, the warm lee of the stove. It follows you with a waddle so earnest you stop mid-chop to watch it. You name it Sunday, because it came aboard on a Sunday and because you cannot abide the gulls.

On the sixth night the swell gets up off Finisterre and every pan in the galley leaps on its hook. You find Sunday wedged under the drawer where the ladles live, chirping at the door, and you realise it has been trying to reach the open deck all along, to the rail where the wind comes in off the water. You carry it up in your apron pocket, past the lamp swinging on its chain, and set it down on the wet steel.

It stands very still, neck out, staring at the dark sea as though it has an opinion about it. Then it turns and pads back towards the yellow light of the galley door, where you are holding the hatch open with your hip while the cold climbs your sleeves. Some creatures only ever go one way. You shut the hatch, put the kettle on, and count the sacks for breakfast at six.