Two photos of a black and grey blackwork forest tattoo on a forearm, showing pine trees and a small bear silhouette fading into dark ground near the wrist.

Black forest scene with a bear on a forearm

Blackwork · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

The tattoo covers the forearm with a silhouetted forest of tall pine trees and slimmer bare trees, with a small bear walking across the middle of the scene. The solid black shapes are set against the skin with soft grey haze between the trunks, and the ground fades into a dark band near the wrist. The two views show the same forearm, one with the palm facing down and one with the palm facing up, against a plain pale background.

Blackwork Forearm Forest Tree Pine tree Bear Silhouette Landscape Wrist

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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

By the third hour the fog has eaten the path, so you walk by the sound of the stream instead. Ada's map is folded in your coat pocket, its pencilled line marking the old drovers' track over Hasket Pass, though nothing on the ground agrees with it. The pines stand close on either side, black and dripping, their tops lost somewhere above the grey.

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Between them the slimmer birches have gone bare and pale, like a row of people waiting for a bus that stopped running years ago. You stop when you see the bear. It is not large, and it does not hurry. It crosses the clearing ahead with its head low, the way a man crosses a room where someone is sleeping, and it does not look at you once.

You follow at a distance because the track has finally reappeared beneath its prints. Where the ground drops into a dark band of bracken and shadow, the bear stops and waits for you. You think of the cairn Ada circled on the photograph, the one she swore stood at the top of the pass, and you realise the animal is keeping to the line she drew, a few careful steps ahead of you every time.

At the summit the fog tears open. Below you the valley is full of trees and no roads at all, and the bear has already gone into them. Ada's map was wrong about the pass, but not about the way down. You fold it away and go on.