I swear, when I first got the request to hunt down eight, count ’em, eight small and simple Horoscope tattoos for Pisces, I just rolled my eyes. Seriously? Pisces? You know how many elaborate, flowy, watercolor-looking, ‘spiritual journey’ monstrosities pop up when you search for that crap?
My usual gig? It’s big stuff. Full sleeves. Back pieces. I’m talking dragons and skulls and biomechanical nightmares. That’s where the real craftsmanship is. But small and simple? That’s like asking a five-star chef to make toast. It sounds easy, right? It’s not. It’s hard to make something tiny still look meaningful, not just like a smudge or a mistake.
I started digging. I tried to find the common themes. I spent a whole damn afternoon just on Pinterest and Instagram. What a mess. 90% of it was the same old garbage, just sized down. They looked like clip art that got run over by a truck. I felt like I was wasting my valuable time, honestly.
The Great Filter Process and The Eight Finalists
I realized I couldn’t trust what was out there. I had to strip it back myself. I had to become the “minimalist tattoo guy,” which is pretty funny considering the state of my own arms.
My process, if you can call it that, was brutal. I decided if a design needed more than three separate lines or if you had to explain what it was, it was out. Gone. I went through hundreds of sketches—mine and other people’s—just deleting or redrawing. It was pure distillation. I kept telling myself, “The design has to say ‘Pisces’ without screaming it.”
Eventually, I hammered out the eight designs. They were the ones that survived the fire. I basically categorized them, even though I hate making lists like this, it just helps me keep my thoughts straight:
- The Double Crescent: Two simple curved lines facing away from each other. Looks almost like a very stylized ‘H’.
- The Intertwined Dots: Two dots connected by one single, continuous, looping line. No fish, no water, just movement.
- The Tiny Constellation: A micro-version of the actual star map. I mean micro, like pinpricks.
- Single Line Wave: Just three, simple, consecutive ripples.
- Reversed Parentheses: Like the astrological symbol, but made thinner and cleaner.
- The Infinity Fish: A single, simple line drawing of two fish that loop into an infinity shape. The only one with actual fish, but it had to be a single, unbroken stroke.
- The Yin-Yang Current: Two swirls, like currents meeting, but not fully connected.
- The Single Scale: Maybe the dumbest one, but it works. Just one overlapping small circle. Almost invisible.
I put all eight on a single sheet of paper and just stared at them, feeling like I had finally accomplished something stupidly small but incredibly difficult. And that was that. I was ready to send the file and forget about it.
The Real Reason I Wasted My Time On Miniscule Fish
Here’s the thing, though. You gotta know why I bothered to spend three days on this. It wasn’t for a random client. It was for my little brother, Jason.
He wasn’t little anymore, obviously, he’s pushing thirty, but he’ll always be the kid I used to hide from our dad. Jason had a rough few years. Got himself stuck in a job, you know, the kind that eats your soul. He couldn’t quit because of the bills. His wife wanted a new house, a new car, the whole shebang. He was just grinding, miserable.
Finally, he broke. He didn’t just quit the job; he walked out mid-meeting. Didn’t say a word, just packed his desk and left. He drove straight to my place, and I thought he was going to cry or throw up, but he just stood there with this weird, nervous energy.
“I need a tattoo,” he said. That was it. Just that. “A really small one. Nothing dramatic. Something that says ‘I’m starting over,’ but if Mom sees it, she’ll just think it’s a mole.”
I was floored. Jason has always been the cautious one, the rule-follower. Never even jaywalked in his life. And now he wants a secret tattoo to mark his new beginning. A rebellion that only he, his wife, and I would know about.
When I showed him my portfolio of big, nasty pieces, he just shook his head. He was terrified. That’s why the small designs became important. It wasn’t about the art; it was about the baby step. It was the transition from being a totally suffocated adult to taking back just one square inch of his own life.
I took that list of eight designs, and we actually went to this studio way across town, the only one I trust for clean, single-needle work. I went with him, sat there, and watched the guy ink it on his inner arm. It was the Reversed Parentheses design. Took maybe ten minutes, less than what it takes to drink a cup of coffee.
When he stood up, he didn’t even look at the mirror much. He just kept looking at me, and he finally smiled. A real, honest-to-god smile that I hadn’t seen in about five years. That tiny smudge, that little scrap of ink, meant more than any full sleeve I’ve ever done.
I kept the list of those eight designs, not because I want to become the minimalist guy, but because sometimes the little things are the only ones people can handle. Sometimes, starting over just means getting a few lines scratched onto your skin where no one else can see them. That’s the real practice I recorded that day.
