Black dotwork tattoo of an arc of circles in varying sizes on the outer thigh, with two small elongated marks in the middle of the arc.

Arc of black dots on a thigh

Dotwork · Thigh · Black and grey · Photo

The tattoo is a curved arc of solid black circles that step down in size from a large pair near the centre to small dots at each end. Two small elongated black shapes sit beside the larger circles in the middle of the arc. The ink is solid black with no shading or colour, and the bare skin of the upper leg fills most of the frame, with a dark bed and a red blanket behind.

Dotwork Thigh Circle Dot Arc

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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 generator coughs like a pensioner on the last night of the season, and you are still throwing, because nobody has told the big top it is finished. Three balls rise from your right hand in a long curve, the two heavy ones high in the middle, the little brass ones dropping away to nothing at either end. You have thrown that arc ten thousand times. Tonight it feels like someone else's arithmetic.

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Cornelius sold the lorries in October, and the elephant went to a farm near Doncaster, where she has, by all accounts, a field and a view. Twelve of you are left under canvas that smells of wet rope and diesel. Mirela left at Christmas to sew costumes for a dance company in Leeds. Nobody in the front row is paying attention except a girl of about seven with a toffee apple, who counts your throws out loud, and who has got to nine before you hear her.

Ten is where it always breaks. The left-hand club clips the tent pole, and the arc tears open like a seam. You could catch them. You know exactly where your palms should go. Instead you open your hands and let the last two drop, and they hit the sawdust one after another, thock, thock, and roll in the same curve you were drawing in the air, away into the dark under the seats.

The girl claps once, politely, the way people clap at the end of something they paid for. You bow. Cornelius switches off the spotlight, and the tent goes the colour of the inside of a plum, and for a moment you can still see the arc hanging there, black against the dark, big in the middle, fading to nothing at each end.