Black and grey blackwork tattoo of a Dalek within a diamond outline on an arm, shaded with dotwork and fine hatching.

Dalek inside a geometric diamond on an arm

Blackwork · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

A Dalek is drawn front-on inside an outlined diamond with a small triangle above and below it. The dome, slatted skirt and plunger details are rendered in solid black, fine hatching and stippled dots. The design is in black ink and greys only and sits centrally on a pale arm against a dark background.

Blackwork Dotwork Geometric Forearm Dalek Robot Triangle

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dear Mother, the moat is down to black silt now, and the men have stopped arguing over whether the thing in the sluice gate is a boiler or a bell. It is neither. I have it on the trestle in the gatehouse under the good lamp, and for three evenings I have tried to cut it onto copper for Mr Ashdown's catalogue of salvage without once touching its skirt with the burin, because the slats are warm to the back of the hand and the warmth rises and falls like a sleeper's breath.

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It stands no higher than my forearm. The dome is pocked and ridged like a cooking pot left out in frost, with a single brass plunger crooked up from the top as though it were reaching for a shelf. Below the dome runs a band of slatted grille, and below that a skirt of studded panels, each stud as round and black as a sloe. I have drawn it four times on tracing paper. Each drawing has come out with one stud more than the last, and this morning there were thirteen on the left side where I had counted eleven.

Ashdown wants a border. He says a diamond, with a small triangle above and another below so the eye can rest. I drew it that way and cut the frame around the figure, and when I lifted the burin the plunger had turned a quarter toward the window, toward the clock tower.

I am sending this with the carrier, but I will not post the plate. Mr Ashdown may have it cut without me. I have only to say that the bell in the tower has just struck noon, and the grille has begun to hum.