Black and grey blackwork tattoo of a hand with crossed fingers in engraving-style hatching, on the inner forearm.

Crossed fingers hand on forearm

Blackwork · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

A hand with the index and middle fingers crossed, shown with the fingers curled and the thumb tucked in. The design is built from dense black cross-hatching and stippled lines in an engraving style, with shading across the knuckles and palm. The left photo shows the whole forearm and a relaxed open hand, and the right photo is a close-up of the tattoo itself.

Blackwork Forearm Hand

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

Ada Pether had worked the night shift on Ward Seven for nineteen years, and in all that time she had told the dying only one lie, and she told it with her fingers crossed behind her back. The old men always asked whether the morning would bring their sons. Ada always said it would.

Keep reading

One February a boy came up from the coast with a bag of mussels still in his coat and a fever that would not break. His mother sat by the bed with her hands in her lap. He asked Ada whether the sea was still grey. She said it was, and would be grey tomorrow too, and that his mother would be at the window when the gulls came over. Ada's right hand hung at her hip, index and middle finger folded across each other like two roots meeting under a field.

The boy did not see the morning. Ada had known he would not, but the lie had never been meant for him. It was for the mother, who needed one thing in that room to stay unfinished. Ada sat with her until the tea on the trolley went cold, and the fingers stayed crossed the whole time, because a charm only holds if you keep your hand the way the old women taught you.

Near dawn the gulls came over the car park and the window went pale. Ada uncrossed her fingers, lifted the blind and told the mother the sun was up. It was true enough this time. Nobody, she reckoned, had ever been punished for a lie that bought a mother one hour of morning.