Black and grey 3D tribal design with a cracked stone effect running across the upper arm and onto the shoulder.

3D tribal design on upper arm

Realism · Upper arm · Black and grey · Photo

A large tribal design with swirling curves and sharp spiked points runs down the upper arm and onto the shoulder. Heavy black shading and grey highlights give the lines a raised, carved appearance, and fine cracks are drawn across the surfaces to suggest stone. The design is shown in black and grey only, with the composition following the curve of the arm.

Realism Upper arm Shoulder Tribal Spike Swirl Abstract

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dear Nell,

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The sun stone came off the cart at Harrow Lane this morning with a crack running clean through its middle, right where the rays meet the spiral. Mr Pardoe swore at it for a full minute, then made me hold the lamp while he traced the fracture with his thumb. He says stone always tells you where it wants to split, and that a good mason listens before he chisels. I thought he was being poetical until he handed me the broken half and told me to set it in the wall of the lych gate anyway.

The spikes are the hard part. Every ray has to be cut a little deeper than the last so the shadow falls the same way at dusk, and whoever carved the gate before us must have had a steadier hand than mine, because his edges are still sharp after two hundred winters. Pardoe showed me where he had undercut the spirals so they seem to lift off the face of the stone. It is all shadow and no colour, just the grey of wet slate, but I could swear the curls shift when the wind comes up the valley through the beeches.

Yesterday I walked out past the last cottage to look at the old quarry. Ivy has taken the upper ledge, and there is a carved rim half buried in leaf mould, the same swirl and spike as our sun but bigger, and cracked across the middle in the same place. Someone filled that crack with lead a long time ago. I scraped the moss away and laid my palm on the carving, and the stone was warm, which it has no business being in March.

I haven't told Pardoe. I'm going back at first light with the broken half in my satchel, to see whether it fits.

Your loving brother, Tom