Black ink full sleeve tattoo with bold geometric and tribal-style patterns covering a forearm, upper arm and hand, shown on a standing person in a grey t-shirt.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Black geometric sleeve tattoo on arm and hand

Blackwork · Upper arm · Black and grey · Photo

A full arm sleeve covers the upper arm, forearm and back of the hand, filled with bold geometric motifs including sunburst circles, spirals, triangles and dotted rings. The linework is heavy and solid, with dense black areas contrasting against lighter skin between the motifs. The arm is held out from the body against a plain silver backdrop, with the hand resting on a dark-jeaned hip.

Blackwork Geometric Upper arm Forearm Hand Sleeve Sunburst Spiral Triangle Circle Tribal pattern

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 boat came in on the third tide after the storm, and old Hanna Pell was still on the slipway with her chisel, cutting rings into the wet stone because nobody else in Carrow Haven would do it any more.

Keep reading

Her grandmother had taught her the marks before the harbour wall was built. A sunburst meant a light was wanted, so the boats would look for it. Spirals told the water where to turn. Triangles were for the teeth of rock off Sker Point, and the dots went round the edge like fish scattered on a net, which was how you asked the sea for a catch and not for a body. Hanna had cut them on every post and step for forty years, and most of the young men thought it was a grandmother's fancy.

Tom Ardle had laughed at her that morning, with his arms folded and his boots on the quay. He went out anyway, into the fog, and when the cloud broke at midnight he was sitting on the stern with his hands white on the tiller, looking at a ring of light lying on the black water, rays spreading out from it in every direction. He steered for it. He swore afterwards that the swell had gone soft under him where the spirals were drawn, and that he had heard the dots clicking like shingle as he passed the rocks.

Now he stood beside her in the grey dawn and held out his palm, which had a raw line across it from the rope. Hanna took the chisel from the stone and began the next ring, slowly, while the tide slid in over the cuts she had already made. Each groove filled with seawater and caught the sun as it climbed, so that the whole slipway flashed with circles, and the boats coming round the point could see the way in.