Black fine-line tattoo of branching, vein-like lines running across the upper arm and forearm of a man in a black t-shirt.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Branching vein-like linework down an arm

Fine line · Upper arm · Black and grey · Photo

The photograph shows a man's arm with thin black branching lines that resemble veins or tree roots, running from the upper arm over the elbow and down to the wrist. The linework is fine and uneven, with lines splitting and tapering as they travel, and the design is entirely black ink on pale skin. The arm is shown against a plain cream wall and a black t-shirt, with the composition cropped at the shoulder and hand.

Fine line Upper arm Forearm Vein Branches Root Linework

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

Sit down, sit down, the queue is not going anywhere and neither am I, said Old Petra, though the guard in the glass box had already waved the lorry on. She had told this tale to drivers for thirty years, always at the same crossing, where the road is one white line painted across a field of sheep.

Keep reading

The chestnut at the bridge had roots that ran under both countries. Nobody had drawn a border through the ground, you understand, only through the paperwork. So the roots split where the river split, and each thin branch found its way under the fence, under the customs sheds, under the tarmac, and came up again on the far side wanting water. A farmer on the north bank tried to cut one out with a spade in 1961. It bled sap for a week, and his son stopped speaking to him for the rest of that summer.

Last spring a young clerk from the capital came to measure the tree for a road scheme. He stood under the chestnut with his clipboard and said the roots would crack his new culvert. Then he knelt, pushed his fingers into the soil, and followed one root for nine metres until it ran beneath his own boots. He stayed there until the light went, and when he stood up his cheeks were muddy and he had forgotten the clipboard entirely.

So I tell you now, driver, the lines in the ground do not care who signs the form. Put your hand flat on the bonnet before you go. Feel that warmth? That is the river talking up through the steel. Off you go, and mind the roots on the far side.