Black tattoo on a woman's shoulder and upper arm, with a solid black cap breaking into fine line scribbles, small numerals and an outlined star.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Blackwork shoulder cap fading into fine line scribbles

Blackwork · Shoulder · Black and grey · Photo

The tattoo covers the shoulder and upper arm, with a solid black cap at the top of the shoulder that breaks into jagged, fragmented edges. Fine black lines loop and trail down the arm and across the chest, with small dots, numerals and an outlined five-pointed star near the elbow. The work is in black ink only, photographed against a textured pale wall with the subject cropped at the neck and midriff.

Blackwork Fine line Shoulder Upper arm Star Number Line Dot

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 lost property office at Marlow Road closed at six, but Dora Quayle never left until the last stopper had rattled past the window. Forty years of umbrellas, prams and one stuffed owl had taught her that the things nobody claimed were the ones worth keeping track of. Tonight it was a tin box a man had left on the 17:42, and when she prised the lid open with a letter knife, it held a sheaf of ticket stubs.

Keep reading

Each stub was numbered in pencil, and beside every number someone had inked a small dot. A few had a star cut from a Christmas card glued to the corner. The numbers ran in sequence, and when she checked them against the old timetables in the back cupboard, they matched departures from Platform Two, which had been fenced off since 1971. Someone had been catching trains that no longer ran, and recording each one with a neat, patient hand.

She followed the loops of ink on the last stub as if they were track, and they led her out through the ticket hall, down the steps, and onto Platform Two. The bench there was empty. The station clock above it had stopped at 17:42, but as she stood under it the minute hand jerked forward one notch, then another. When she looked down at the ledger in her arms, she found the margin was full of the same looping lines, drawn in her own hand, and she could not remember drawing any of them.

She went back to the office, stamped the box UNCLAIMED, and wrote the number on the label. Then she drew a small star around it, filed the stubs under R for Return, and left the light on for whoever was counting.