Close-up of a fine line black outline tattoo of the state of Texas behind a person's ear, with the ear and hair visible.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Texas state outline behind the ear

Fine line · Neck · Black and grey · Photo

A single black outline of the state of Texas sits on the skin behind the ear, with the outer edge of the ear and some hair visible around it. The linework is thin and even, with no shading or fill inside the shape. The tattoo is the only colour element, set against warm skin tones in a close, shallow-focus photograph.

Fine line Geometric Neck Texas State outline Map Outline

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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

Tuesday, 14 March. Wind out of the south-east, so the plane table keeps lifting at the corners and I have pinned it down with two bricks and my own boot. Mr Oakes from the county office has sent word that the railway men want the boundary checked before the spur goes through, and I am to finish by Friday or lose my wage for the week. I have been at the Sabine since dawn, sighting the bend against a pole Ruiz planted in the mud.

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The trouble is not the river. The trouble is the old line, drawn in 1840 by a man who never set foot west of the Brazos, who gave the state a panhandle like the handle of a skillet and a southern edge that wanders out into the Gulf as if it had lost its way. Ruiz says the Spanish surveyors drew it better, and I told him to keep that opinion to himself in front of the crew. He laughed, the sort of laugh that makes the mules nervous.

By four o'clock I had the corner fixed and the whole outline traced in pencil onto a sheet of oilcloth, every bay and cut and stubborn kink of it. I inked it with the fine pen Mother gave me, and when I held it to the light the line was so thin and even I could hardly believe my hand had made it. Ruiz wanted a wash of colour for the land. I said no. The state is only the edge of itself, I told him, and that is all anybody needs to know.

Friday, Mr Oakes sent the sheet back with one word scrawled across the margin: Good. I have pinned it above my cot, where the lamp reaches it last thing at night. Ruiz asked me yesterday whether I meant to go back to Ohio. I said I had drawn the only edge I cared about, and it fit neatly on oilcloth.