Black ink sketch of a cluster of tall city buildings on a forearm, with a hand holding a black marker beside it.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Buildings sketch on a forearm

Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

The tattoo shows a cluster of tall buildings with rows of windows, drawn with loose, sketchy black outlines and some hatched shading. It sits on a forearm raised towards a hand holding a black marker, with a printed sheet, a camera and a plaid fabric visible in the background. The design is in black ink only, shown in a close, angled view of the arm.

Forearm Building City Skyline Window

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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 Big Wheel always stopped at the top when Dennis leaned on the brake to let the candyfloss queue catch up. From my gondola I could see the whole of Harrowmere laid out grey and wet, the tower blocks standing in a row along the ring road like teeth in a comb. I had a black marker from the ticket kiosk and the back of an old float sheet, and I was drawing them before the wheel shuddered on again.

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My father ran the Waltzer and said the wheel was perfectly safe, which is what he said about everything that rattled. I counted windows the way other kids counted sheep. Most of them were dark, but a few had lights on, and I gave those names. The lit window on the ninth floor was a nurse coming off nights. The one beside it was a boy with a kite that never quite got into the sky. I hatched the shadows underneath with short quick lines, because the lamps never reached the pavement and somebody had to be honest about that.

On Tuesday the fair came down in the rain. Paper goes missing in lorries, so I took the marker and copied the skyline onto the inside of my forearm, checking each block against the sheet until the outline was right. My father watched me do it from the cab steps and said the lorries lose everything except ink.

At the coast pitch the rain had got into the lines and softened them. The nurse's window had bled into the brickwork. I went looking for the boy with the kite, and I found him sharp enough, so I went over him twice, pressing hard, until he stood out darker than the rest of the city.