Black line drawing of stylised sea waves with curling crests and spray, framed inside a circle, shown as a tattoo design without a body placement.

Stylised waves inside a circle

Black and grey · Flash

A black line drawing of stylised sea waves with curling crests, spray droplets and layered parallel contour lines, rising from the bottom of a circular frame. The upper half of the circle is left empty. The linework is uniform and solid black on a white background, with no shading or colour.

Wave Sea Spray Swirl Circle

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

Nobody at Porthgwidden cottage hospital liked the round window at the end of the east corridor. It was a porthole the builders had salvaged from the old lifeboat house, and when the spring tides came in at two in the morning the water climbed the cliff path and slapped against the glass until the frames hummed. Night sister Ruth Penhale kept it shut with a brass hook and a towel stuffed along the sill, and she told the new porters that the sea only wanted to be seen.

Keep reading

One February a porter called Dafydd Rowe came on shift with a cough and a cracked thumb and no patience for stories. At half past two the window began to drum. He went down the corridor with his torch to tell the water to mind its manners, and found the hook already lifted and the towel dropped in a dark puddle. Through the glass the sea stood up in three great curls, their crests frilled and spitting, and above them the sky was clear and empty, the way a page is left blank for a second thought.

A voice came from behind him. Old Mr Trewin from bed nine stood in his nightshirt with one hand against the wall. "It's only asking to be let out," he said, "same as the men were asking in 1931." Dafydd did not ask what he meant. He eased the window open the width of a hand, and the wind came in smelling of kelp and rain, and the spray lifted off the crests in a fine ring and drifted back over the water.

By the time the day staff arrived the sea had settled. Ruth found the window open and the towel folded neatly on the sill, and beside it a single wet curl of weed shaped like a question mark. She left the hook off after that.