A small black abstract swirl tattoo sits on the lower leg just above the ankle, with a purple canvas trainer on the foot.

Small swirl tattoo on an ankle

Ankle · Black and grey · Photo

A small black tattoo of a curling, abstract swirl with a rounded tail sits on the outside of a lower leg, just above the ankle. The bold, solid linework is set against pale skin, with a few faint red marks around it. The composition is a casual photograph taken at foot level, showing the tattoo alongside a purple canvas trainer on a patterned carpet.

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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

Mrs Pardoe had kept the boarding house at Saltcote for thirty-one years and had never once let a guest carry their own trunk up the stairs. So when the new lodger arrived in October with a single canvas bag and a tin of pencils, she took the bag without asking and felt its weight, which was mostly paper.

Keep reading

He drew at the kitchen table after breakfast, while the kettle ticked and the sea wind rattled the back door in its frame. He drew waves, but not the way the postcards did. He drew the curl a breaker makes just before it gives up, the lip folding over on itself, the foam left hanging like a question. Mrs Pardoe, who had watched a hundred storms come in off the North Sea, pretended not to look over his shoulder and looked anyway.

"You want to draw the bit that goes under," she said one morning, setting down a plate of toast. "Everyone draws the top."

He didn't answer for a while. Then he turned the page over and drew a small hook, a single stroke that curled back toward its own beginning and stopped, the way a tide does when it has decided to stay.

On the last morning the tide was out so far that the rock pools shone like dropped coins. He was gone before the post came. On the table, under the marmalade pot, lay the drawing, and in the margin, in soft pencil, one word: keep.

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