Black and grey photo of three tiny star tattoos arranged in a triangle on an ankle, drawn in a fine line style.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Three small stars on an ankle

Fine line · Ankle · Black and grey · Photo

The image shows a close view of an ankle with three small star shapes arranged in a loose triangle near the centre. Each star is drawn with thin, delicate lines and light shading, and the marks are only a few millimetres across. The black and white photograph keeps the focus on the small cluster against plain skin.

Fine line Ankle Star

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 brass telescope at the Mechanics' Institute has a cracked collar, and Mr Dunning will only let you turn the focus with the flat of your palm, never with your fingers. He says fingers leave prints and the sky resents being handled. It is October 1956 and the hall smells of floor polish and wet coats. You have come with the coal merchant's invoice folded in your pocket, the back of it covered in pencil marks your father made the week before he left for the Midlands and never sent for you from.

Keep reading

You unfold it on the sill while Mr Dunning squints through the eyepiece. Three little stars, each drawn with thin spokes and a faint shadow pressed beneath, sit in a loose triangle near the corner. Dunning grunts, adjusts the tube, and tells you there is a grouping low in the west, three points that do not appear on any chart he owns. He writes to the observatory at Herstmonceux that night, and you walk home under a sky that looks exactly as it always has to you.

The reply comes in March. Two dim stars and a smudge on the lens, the letter says, nothing worth a second look. Dunning reads it aloud in the hall with a kind of embarrassed pride, as if he has been caught being hopeful. You thank him and fold the letter into the invoice with the pencil marks.

That evening you hold the paper up against the kitchen window. The three drawn stars sit over the rooftops of the terrace opposite, exactly where the sky has been all along, only smaller and nearer than you ever expected them to be.