Colour traditional anchor tattoo with a red heart on the crossbar, twisted rope and a pink flower at the base, on the upper arm.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Traditional anchor with rope and heart on upper arm

Traditional · Upper arm · Colour · Photo

A bold anchor design with a red heart on the crossbar and twisted rope wrapped around the shank. The anchor is shaded in blue, with dark red and orange flukes, and a pink and red flower sits at the base. The bold black outlines and solid fills are typical of traditional American tattooing, and the photo is a close crop with a white garment at the top and right edges.

Traditional Upper arm Anchor Rope Heart Flower

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 ferryman at Sallow Ford kept his anchor oiled and his rope knotted in nine places, and he would not put a boat out on the grey water until every traveller had told him what they were carrying across. Most said flour, or boots, or a cousin's goose. Ada Penrose said nothing at all. She pressed a red wool heart into his palm and asked him to sew it on the crossbar of the anchor, where the sun would take the colour out of it in a year.

Keep reading

He did not ask why. Ferrymen on that river learned not to. The border ran down the middle of the water, and the two banks had argued over it for three generations, so the ferry carried no soldiers, no tax collectors, and no talk of flags. Osric sewed the heart on with waxed thread that night, beside the lantern, and the next morning the rope came tight against the current as it always did. The anchor dropped at the midpoint, the boat swung on it like a gate, and the passengers stepped off on whichever bank they pleased.

Ada's brother had gone over the year before and never sent word. She wanted only to know whether he was living. On the third morning a thin man in a grey coat came down the steps with a bundle under his arm, and when he saw the heart on the crossbar he stopped and touched it with two fingers, the way a man touches a door he has not opened in a long time. Osric said nothing. He had learned that from the river too.

On the far bank the thin man tied the end of his bundle to the anchor's ring, the way travellers did when they meant to come back. Osric coiled the rope, counted the nine knots, and left the heart where it was.