Close-up of three short black parallel lines tattooed on the skin beside a closed eye and eyebrow, in a minimal fine line style.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Three short lines beside the eye

Fine line · Other · Black and grey · Photo

The photograph is a tight close-up of a closed eye, eyebrow and the surrounding skin. Three short, slightly slanted black lines sit on the skin outside the eyebrow, near the temple. The ink is crisp and uniform in a single dark tone against pale skin, with plain, uncluttered composition.

Fine line Other Line Eye Eyebrow Skin

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 rain came in off the river at six, the way it always did on Thursdays, and by seven the tarpaulins over Shoe Lane were sagging like wet sails. I kept the tally on the inside of the fish-stall shutter, where the paint had blistered into little islands. Three strokes for every crate of eels that left the stall before the bell. My father had kept it that way. He said a man who couldn't count his own losses would be robbed by his own sons.

Keep reading

Tuesday the crates stopped coming. Mr Okonedo, who ran the ice barrow, sent word by the boy with the squint that the north gate was flooded and the cart had gone under at Pell Bridge. I wiped the shutter with my sleeve and sat on an upturned bucket, listening to the drip off the awning. A woman in a green oilskin bought nothing and asked for nothing. She only stood at the counter until I had made the three strokes again, lighter this time, as though she were counting my hands.

The eels came in on Saturday, all of them, slick and furious, and we sold until the lamps guttered. When the last customer had gone I took the chalk and made a fourth stroke beside the others, then thought better of it and rubbed it out with my thumb. Three, I decided, was the number that had got us through. The market didn't need a fourth. It needed someone still standing there when the rain stopped.