Black and grey realism style tattoo of chains wrapping across a shoulder and down the upper arm, shown from two angles.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Chain wrap tattoo on shoulder and upper arm

Realism · Shoulder · Black and grey · Photo

The tattoo shows a chain coiling from the top of the shoulder down the outer upper arm, with broken link ends that appear to fade into the skin. The links are shaded in black and grey with highlights, giving a three-dimensional look. Two side-by-side photographs show the same arm from slightly different angles against a tiled background.

Realism Shoulder Upper arm Chain Shoulder Arm

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 smith at Hollin Ford forged the chain the winter the mill wheel froze solid. Every link was beaten from a worn horseshoe, and she worked through the nights until her palms split, because the river had taken the bridge and the people needed something to pin the water while the new stones were cut.

Keep reading

She ran the chain from the forge door, up over the shoulder of the lane and down past the chapel wall, looping it round every post that would take it. The river rose and pulled, the links sang against the stone, and by Candlemas the flood had gone sullen and low. Her neighbours brought her bread and cheese and asked how long it would hold. She said as long as the iron was willing, which was not an answer anyone liked.

In March the chain snapped at the bend where the water runs fastest. The two ends flew back like a whip, and the smith's apprentice, a boy named Tobias Greave, had been standing too close. He was not hurt, but the broken ends stayed curled where they had struck, bent open like fingers that had let go.

The smith did not mend it. She hung the loose length on the hook above the oven, where the warmth reached it first, and each dawn she walked the lane with a lantern, touching every post the chain had once held, the way you touch a sleeping dog to be sure it is still breathing.