Black and white tribal flash design of spirals, wave bands and triangles, drawn to fit a full arm sleeve.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Black tribal sleeve design with spirals

Blackwork · Black and grey · Flash

A black and white drawing of a tribal-style sleeve design with bold solid black bands, swirling spirals and wave-like curves running the length of the form. Rows of white and black triangles sit between the curved bands, and the faint outline of an arm can be seen around the design. The image is pure black ink on white with no shading or colour.

Blackwork Geometric Spiral Wave Triangle Tribal pattern Sleeve

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

You find the drawings at the bottom of your uncle's sea chest the week after the funeral, folded between a tin of Brasso and a bundle of letters tied with tarred twine. The paper has gone soft as flannel. Black spirals roll down the margin, bands of waves follow them, and between the bands someone has squared off rows of triangles with a steel rule. Your uncle never sailed farther than the Scillies, yet the chest came home from the Pacific in 1921, and every line on these pages is as sure as the tide table pinned in the boathouse.

Keep reading

Mrs Penhallow at the post office says a ship's carpenter from Apia drew them, a quiet man who mended hatches in Falmouth and would sketch a pattern for anyone who stood him a pint. You don't believe her, but you don't argue either. On Thursday, when the pilchard boats have gone out past the Gull Rock and the tide is turning at the slip, you lay the pages on the harbour wall and weigh their corners with pebbles so the wind won't take them.

A boy from the next cottage comes down with a bucket of mackerel and asks what the squiggles are. You tell him they are the sea's own handwriting, the way water pulls at a rope when the swell is coming. He squints at the triangles and says they look like teeth. You tell him that's near enough. Then he runs off, and you are left with a spiral you can't quite finish in your head.

That evening you take your uncle's tin of black paint from the shed and start on the boathouse door, sketching the first curl in chalk and working outward until the wave bands meet the hinge. By the time the lamps come on across the bay the door is covered in the same pattern, rough and wet, and the tide has come up over the slip to the very edge of your boots.