Three views of a black and grey abstract sketch tattoo on the forearm, with loose linework, ink washes and circular shapes.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Abstract black and grey sketch on a forearm

Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

The tattoo covers the inner and outer forearm in abstract shapes, including a large pale circle, dark ink blots, vertical drips and horizontal bars. Fine, loose linework sits alongside heavier black washes, giving a sketchy, gestural look. The three photographs show the forearm from front, side and back angles, with the design wrapping around the arm.

Forearm Abstract Circle Line Sketch

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

By the third evening the ink in your pot had thickened to treacle, and the wood still refused to sit still for your pencil. You had come from the county office with a roll of tracing paper and orders to measure every stand of birch between Ashby Mill and the chalk pit, because the bypass was coming and somebody needed drawings to say what would be lost. The men at the Plough had told you not to go past the stile after dark, and they had said it without looking up from their pints.

Keep reading

So you went past the stile at dusk. The black-headed stalks grew thick along the ditch, each seedhead bowed and heavy, and when the wind moved them they let fall long threads of dark liquid that spattered the leaf litter. You tried to sketch them quickly, the way your tutor had taught you, loose lines and no rubbing out, but the ink ran wherever your hand touched the paper. Beyond them a pale moon hung low over the clearing, flat and bright as a dinner plate, and the bars of a gate at the far side seemed to lift and settle with your breathing.

Ruth at the post office had said the stalks were only ragwort gone to seed. You did not believe her, and you did not believe yourself either when you drew the gate standing open in your notebook and then could not remember whether you had closed it behind you.

In the morning the surveyors walked the line with you. Every stalk along the ditch had been cut to the ground, and the ground was clean and pale as a plate. Nobody else could see a gate, but you could see it, swinging a little, on a field that had never once had one.