Woman sitting cross-legged on grass with a black geometric blackwork band tattooed on her upper arm and down towards her forearm.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Black geometric band on upper arm

Blackwork · Upper arm · Black and grey · Photo

A woman sits cross-legged on grass, wearing a white shirt with the sleeves rolled up and dark jeans. A black geometric band tattoo with bold solid patterns runs down her right upper arm towards the forearm. The photograph is natural and outdoors, with the tattoo as the clear focal point against the soft green background.

Blackwork Geometric Upper arm Forearm Geometric pattern Band Woman Grass

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 west corridor of Harrowgate General has a floor laid in black and cream lozenges, and on nights when the strip lights drop to half power they stop looking like tiles and start looking like a sum someone forgot to finish. I have walked it for eleven years with a trolley that squeaks on the third step from the lift. Tonight the squeak was the only honest thing on the ward.

Keep reading

Bed nine held Mr Lyle Pemberton, a retired joiner who spent forty years cutting joints without a single nail. He couldn't sleep, so he asked me to trace the pattern on his blanket with one finger. Stepped lines, solid and black, turning back on themselves like a river that can't decide which sea it wants. 'Every joint has to bear weight from both sides,' he said. 'Get the grain wrong and the whole thing creaks.'

I traced it for him until the morning porter's cart rattled past the door. He told me about a puzzle box he made for his daughter, a box with no visible lid, only a sequence of sliding panels that had to be moved in the right order. I asked him what the order was. He smiled and said he'd forgotten, and that it didn't matter, because the box still shut.

At five the window went grey and his breathing slowed into the pattern too, a long pause and then a catch, a long pause and then a catch. I folded the blanket into a square and set it on the chair. Then I walked the west corridor back to the lift, counting the lozenges under my shoes, and for once they added up.