Black and grey blackwork tattoo of a circle with concentric wavy lines and a central shape, on the upper arm.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Circular wood-grain style motif on an upper arm

Blackwork · Upper arm · Black and grey · Photo

A solid black circle sits on the arm with concentric wavy lines running inside it, resembling a cross section of wood or a ring of growth. A curved, creature-like form is drawn near the centre and outlined in fine black linework. The image is black and grey with a heavy black fill around the outer edge, and the background shows a wooden floor and a chair.

Blackwork Upper arm Circle Ring Abstract Creature

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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

Right, sit still and listen, because the tree doesn't wait for anybody. Fourteenth floor, Harrow Court. You could see the sycamore from the balcony, the whole of it, its top level with your eyes. Then the council came with their orange vests and a saw on a lorry, and by teatime there was a stump the size of a dustbin lid, and the men were shovelling sawdust into bags like they were clearing a grave.

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Mrs Okonedo from flat nine picked the round cut end off the pile before the lorry pulled away. Nobody asked her why. She carried it up eleven flights in a carrier bag, both arms round it, stopping on every landing to rest it on her knee. Her hip was bad, and she said it was the only thing she'd carried up those stairs that didn't complain back.

She laid it on the kitchen table and counted the rings with a hatpin. Sixty-one. Sixty-one years of weather, she said, and every one of them pressed right into the middle. Dry summers ran thin and pale. Wet years swelled out like bruises. And down in the heartwood, where the grain bent in on itself, there was a small curled shape the men had missed, something that had grown up around a pocket of old rot and called it home. A vole, or nothing at all, she said, but she left it be.

So when your dad's flat gets sold and the lift breaks again, remember the tree kept growing inside itself the whole time. Now eat your crusts, and mind the stairs. They've had a long day.