Fine line black outline tattoo of the African continent on the inner forearm near the wrist, with stacked beaded bracelets worn below it.

Africa continent outline on the inner wrist

Fine line · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

A single black outline of the African continent sits on the inner forearm, drawn with a slightly wobbly, even line and no shading. The skin tone is warm and the background is dark stone and a red floral fabric. Several stacked bracelets with white, pink and purple beads, gold spacers and a lime tassel sit on the wrist below the tattoo, which is the focal point of the composition.

Fine line Forearm Africa Continent Map Outline Bracelet Bead Tassel

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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

The rain had been coming off the market awning in ropes since eleven, and by two the pitch was a puddle with a table in it. I wiped the plastic sleeve of a fat old atlas on my jumper and watched the fruit man across the aisle tip his crates under a tarpaulin. Nobody comes to a map stall in weather like this, which suited me fine. I was waiting for Mrs Okafor's son to bring back the atlas his mother had lent him in the spring, and I had nothing to do but look at coastlines.

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My grandfather taught me to trace an edge without lifting the pen. He'd sit at his kitchen table with tracing paper pinned over the page and tell me a true coast never looks clean, because a hand is always arguing with the land. So you let it wobble. You let the pen go where the ink wants to go and you trust the shape to come out right in the end. I was doing exactly that on the back of a receipt when the boy arrived, dripping, the atlas wrapped in a carrier bag under his coat.

He looked at the receipt over my shoulder and asked what I was drawing. I said it was the continent, and he said it looked like it had been drawn by someone with the shakes. I said my hand shook when I was counting change. He laughed, took the pen out of my fingers, and went over my wobbly line again, slower, pressing hard where the gulf bent in. When he gave it back the rain had thinned to a drizzle and the paper was sodden at one corner, the ink blurred into the edge. I folded it into my pocket. It was the truest coast I'd drawn all year.