Close photo of a forearm with a blackwork tattoo of three solid black bands and two thin black lines wrapping around the arm.

Black banded armband tattoo on forearm

Blackwork · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

The photograph shows a forearm, seen from the side, with a tattoo made of three solid black bands and two thin black lines encircling the arm. The bands are filled with dense black ink and the thin lines are crisp and even, with clean edges against the skin. The ink is entirely black and grey, and the composition sits centrally across the forearm against a blurred street background.

Blackwork Geometric Forearm Band Stripe Line Armband

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

The tide has already turned when Mr Hale hands you the oilskin, and you know from the way he won't look at the boats that the old man is not going back out this season. Sallow Quay is quiet at five. The gulls have the bait boxes, and the diesel smell hangs low over the slipway like something nobody wants to claim.

Keep reading

He tells you to stop holding the wheel like a bride, and you laugh, which is what he wanted. For thirty years he has marked his sleeve with black tape each time the Marguerite came home with a hold that paid for the winter. Three thick bands for the seasons he fished through, two fine lines for the ones when the sea took a man off the stern and they hauled him back alive, barely. Nobody on the quay has asked him to explain. You have always thought he simply liked the look of it.

Now the tape is gone, and he shows you the sleeve he has kept since, the bands gone dark and even as a tide mark. Then he tells you the truth: the thin lines were never for the men who came home. They were for two boys he could not reach, and he wanted their names carried where his hands would always be.

You check every shackle and knot on the Marguerite twice that morning. When you finally go ashore, the cold has found its way under your cuffs, and the lines on the quay look thinner than they did at dawn.