Black and grey dotwork tattoo of a humpback whale lifted by ropes to a small basket, on the inner forearm.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Whale lifted by a balloon on forearm

Dotwork · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

A humpback whale with a stippled body and fine outline hangs from ropes above a small basket, resembling a hot air balloon. The shading is built from dots and fine lines, giving the whale texture and depth, while the ropes and basket are drawn with thin, even linework. The tattoo is set against pale skin and a patterned bandana, and it is shown in black ink and grey tones only.

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

You have the basket lashed to the third rope before the wind turns, and the whale is already rising, slow as a cloud that has decided to go somewhere. Mara says the stipple is the only thing keeping her from calling it a bad idea. Dots, she says, are what the old engravers used when they wanted a thing to look like it was breathing.

Keep reading

The whale was found in the dry bed of the Solent in the year the sea gave up the coast, lying on its side in mud the colour of stewed tea. Nobody agreed on how long it had been there. The gulls had gone, and the children had been warned off with sticks. You remember the smell more than the sight, and the way its eye, half open, still held a little water.

You had the gas bags patched from a salvaged airship and the basket built from the stern of a fishing boat. It took four days to get the ropes under the flukes. On the fifth, the wind came off the downs from the north, and the whale lifted, groaning through its blowhole like timber under strain.

Above the chalk it turned, very slowly, to face the sea it could no longer reach. You watched its grey back shrink against the white sky until it was only a dark seed, and then the wind pushed you the other way, and you let it go. Mara said nothing for a long while. Then she unpicked the knot from her wrist, dropped the spare rope over the side, and remarked that the whale at least knew where the water was now.

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