Fine line black wave tattoo on the side of a wet, tanned torso near the ribs.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Small wave tattoo on the side ribs

Fine line · Ribs · Black and grey · Photo

A small, single-line black wave sits on the side of a tanned torso, with a tiny dot of ink just to its left. The linework is thin and even, with a solid black stroke and no shading. Water droplets cover the skin around the tattoo, and the soft, sunlit background keeps the focus on the design.

Fine line Ribs Wave Ocean Line Dot

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 sign painter Ruth Pascoe had three days to finish the lettering on the Wren's new transom before the boat went down the slip, and the only thing she had not decided was the small mark that would sit beside the name. Her apprentice, Dev, a boy from Newlyn who wanted to paint something larger than a dinghy's initials, kept finding scraps of paper on her bench covered in the same drawing: one curled stroke, lifting at the end, and a single dot to its left.

Keep reading

"That's not a fish," he said on the second morning, squinting at the sheet against the grey light from the yard door. "And it isn't a gull."

She told him it was the mark her father used to make in the back of his tally book whenever the tide turned while he was out before dawn. The line was the swell lifting, the dot was the boat, and he always drew it so the boat sat just behind the crest, as if it had been caught and was still deciding whether to be carried. Dev said that was a lot of meaning for a squiggle. Ruth said most of the good things in a harbour were a lot of meaning for a squiggle.

On launch morning the fog came in off the breakwater, so thick the crane driver could not see the cradle. Ruth painted the wave in one pass without lifting the brush, the way her father had taught her to do the signature on a receipt. Dev watched her set the dot down and frowned, because she had put it on the wrong side, the shore side, where the boat would have to turn back to see it.

"Leave it," she said. When the Wren slid into the water and the fog closed behind her, the little mark faced the harbour wall, and somebody on the quay was waving.