Fine black line tattoo of a circular geometric symbol with overlapping circles and arcs on a person's ribs, beside a navy top.

Circular geometric symbol on ribs

Fine line · Ribs · Black and grey · Photo

A single black line tattoo sits on the side of the ribs, showing a large outer circle enclosing smaller overlapping circles, arcs and a curved line. The linework is even and thin with no shading, and the design is set against plain skin. The photo is a close, slightly angled selfie with the face and head out of frame, a navy top pulled up at the side and a dark background.

Fine line Geometric Ribs Circle Geometric symbol Arc Overlapping circles

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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

Dad taught me to read the winding gear before I could read the Bible. Three rings and one crooked line, he'd say, scratching them into the coal dust on the lamp-room bench with a nail. The big ring was the drum, the smaller ones the bearings that carried it, and the curved line was the rope that lifted men out of the dark.

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The spring I turned fifteen, the cage jammed at the four-hundred-foot landing with Tom Pryce inside it. Nobody would climb the headframe in that wind except me, because I was the only lad small enough to squeeze along the wheelhouse ledge. I had the drawing in my head rather than on paper, and I remember thinking those circles were the only honest thing in Harrowgate.

I found the fault where the rope had jumped its groove, a little bite out of the curve, exactly as it sat on the bench. I eased the brake a hair, freed the rope, and shouted the rings down the shaft to Tom so he would know where he was: big, middle, little, big again, until his lamp swung up into daylight.

Dad didn't say well done. He took the nail from the bench, scratched a fresh circle in the dust beside the old one, and drew a rope running clean through the middle of it. That was the only praise he ever gave me, and I still carry it, a small bite of rope inside a ring, the morning the cage came up.