Black line tattoo of a crucifixion scene with an INRI plaque, two robed mourners, angels, a dove and dotted stars, on the upper arm.

Crucifixion scene with mourners on upper arm

Fine line · Upper arm · Black and grey · Photo

A black line tattoo covers the upper arm and shows a crucifixion scene with an INRI plaque above the cross, two angels at the crossbar and two robed mourning figures at either side. A dove and a ring of small dotted stars surround the composition, and an ornamental scrollwork base sits beneath the figures. The linework is uniform and thin with no shading or colour, and the design is centred on the arm.

Fine line Dotwork Upper arm Cross Angel Dove Star

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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

Sit down by the range, the pair of you, and mind the cat. You want to hear how the Ellery boy came to draw the cross on the chapel wall, because nobody in this town tells it right any more.

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Nineteen-twelve, that was. The lifeboat had gone out in a February gale to the Maud and come back with four men and one short. Young Ellery was apprenticed to a stonemason in Bridlington, and he'd been sent to cut the plaque for the memorial, but the mason wanted letters and Ellery wanted faces. So he sat up nights with a pen and a bottle of ink, and he drew the thing the way the old missal had it: the cross, the title nailed up above with its four letters, a pair of angels leaning on the crossbar as if they were tired of holding it, and the two women at the foot, one with her hands wrapped in her shawl and the other with her palms open, as if she was asking the sea for something back.

The dove he put at the top, and the stars he dotted round the edge, one for every soul the town had lost since the chapel was built. He counted them twice, my mother said, and got a different number each time, so he left them all in and let God sort out the difference. The scrollwork underneath he took from an ironwork gate at the harbour, a fern or a wave, depending on who you ask.

When the mason saw it he wept, and then he charged him double for the lettering. Every spring since, when the first boat goes out past the point, somebody lights a lamp in the window of this house and counts the little stars on the wall until the boat comes back. Count with me now. You'll never get the same number twice.