Fine line black tattoo of a geometric bear built from overlapping circles, with Roman numerals X and VI, on an arm.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Bear made of overlapping circles

Geometric · Other · Black and grey · Photo

A bear walking to the right is formed from overlapping circles and arcs, with its outline drawn in thin black lines and small dots marking points where the circles meet. Roman numerals X and VI sit within the body of the bear. The tattoo is done in black ink on pale skin, with a plain light background and a dark strip along the bottom edge of the photograph.

Geometric Fine line Other Bear Circle Roman numeral Geometric shape Animal

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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

You reach the stall at the end of Cattle Market Row just as the rain thickens, and the old man under the tarpaulin is already wiping his brass loupe on his sleeve. He does not look up. On the trestle, between a tin of spare hands and a tray of broken pocket watches, a sheet of drawing paper is pinned at the corners against the wind, and on it a bear walks to the right, built entirely out of circles.

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"Compasses don't lie," he says, as though you had argued. "Set the point, sweep the arc, and wherever two of them meet you get a joint. Every animal is just a place where circles agree." He taps the bear's shoulder, where two rings overlap like coins on a saucer, and the ink dots there are fat with damp. The X and the VI sit inside the body, he explains, because a bear keeps its hours in its shadow, and the rest of the day is spent walking away from the hour it came from.

You ask what it costs. He names a figure, then halves it, then asks you to bring the compass back once it has been used on something that matters. Rain drums on the tarpaulin. A boy runs past with a crate of wet lettuce, and the bear's outline trembles where the water has found the paper.

You fold it into your coat, careful of the corners. At the bottom of the lane you open it again under a fishmonger's awning and count the circles. There are eleven. You are certain there were twelve when you first saw it, and the twelfth is the one you cannot find, the one a bear would walk around rather than through.