Black fine line tattoo of dense vertical lines across the upper chest, worn with a silver necklace and a grey top.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Vertical line tattoo on the chest

Fine line · Chest · Black and grey · Photo

A horizontal band of dense, vertical black lines sits on the upper chest and fades at its edges, resembling a skyline or a row of tall shapes. The linework is fine and built up with many close strokes, giving a soft, shaded look. The palette is black and grey, and the photo is cropped close to the chest, with a silver pendant necklace and rings on the hands visible.

Fine line Chest Line Skyline Necklace

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

Sit down before the kettle boils over, and mind the rail, it's still hot from the stew pot. You want to know why I count masts? Forty-one stood up out of Haldane Quay the winter I signed on, each one a thin black line against the sky, packed so close together you'd swear someone had drawn them with a fine nib and a steady hand.

Keep reading

My father's schooner was the last of them, the one with the green stripe along her hull. Every night I stood on the fo'c'sle and counted, and every night the fog rolled off the water and rubbed a few out. Thirty-eight. Thirty-nine. The lines at the edges went first, fading like a bad print, and I learned to tell the ships by the gaps they left behind.

The night she didn't come in, I counted twice and got thirty-nine both times, which was one short of nothing. The cook, old Mrs Ferrier, who had fed three generations of sailors and never once let anyone call her anything but Ferrier, put a ladle in my hand and told me to stir. 'Lines don't go anywhere,' she said. 'Only the eye gets tired.'

Forty years on I still can't say whether she was right. But I'll tell you what she did. She wiped the steam off the porthole with her sleeve, pressed one finger to the cold glass, and drew a row of tall strokes, close and dark, until the fog had nothing left to hide. Then she handed me the ladle again. Mind the rail.