Black and grey tribal-style heart design with spiked, flame-like wings drawn on a white background, shown as a tattoo design without a body placement.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Tribal heart with spiked wings

Black and grey · Flash

A bold, symmetrical tribal heart outlined in thick black linework, with sweeping spiked shapes extending from each side and a narrow point at the base. The heart and spikes are filled with solid black and grey shading, with a pale highlight inside the heart. The design is centred on a plain white background.

Heart Tribal Spike Wing Symmetrical design

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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

Dear Nell, Mr Pascoe has finally agreed to hang the gate, though he says it looks like a bramble that has been to sea. I took the drawing down to the forge on Tuesday, the one you laughed at, the heart with the spiked wings, and watched Eli Tregear beat it out of a strip of old mooring chain.

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He kept the heart round and clean, then drew the wings out in long barbs, one for each gull that came over the harbour wall in March. He wouldn't let me near the hammer. He said the spikes had to come from the same hand as the point at the bottom, or they would sit wrong, and I was not to fuss. I fussed anyway. I counted them twice on the anvil: seven each side, and a little double barb at the base like a keel.

The gate went up on Friday with the tide out. Pascoe stood back with his pipe and said it was a daft thing to put on a chapel gate, and then he went quiet and rubbed the middle of the heart where the iron had been polished bright, and said his wife had liked hearts that didn't have to be flattering.

Tonight the lamp in the vestry shone through the open heart and laid a pale one on the path, and the gulls, for once, went round it. I'll post you a rubbing when the ink dries. Yours, Bea.