Black and grey fine line doodle sleeve on an upper arm, with an owl, pizza slice, boombox, cassette tape and script lettering.

Doodle sleeve with owl, boombox and script

Fine line · Upper arm · Black and grey · Photo

The sleeve is covered in loose, hand-drawn doodles including an owl, a pizza slice, a guitar pick, a cassette tape and a boombox, with the numerals 1999 in an ornate frame. Script lettering runs across the middle of the arm, and a cartoon face with spiky hair sits low in the frame. The linework is thin and uniform in black ink with no shading or colour, and the drawings fill the image edge to edge.

Fine line Upper arm Owl Pizza Script Cartoon face Doodle Sleeve

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

You are the one holding the cassette case by its cracked hinge when Dougie Harte shoulders through the fire door of the Majestic and the bass comes up through the floorboards like a second pulse. The hall smells of Lynx, spilt cider and somebody's vinegar chips. Out on Kenyon Road the owl on the lamppost is already awake, because owls have never cared what year it is.

Keep reading

The boombox sits on a plastic crate by the decks, borrowed from Dougie's nan and taped at the handle with gaffer tape. You recorded the tape off Radio One at two in the morning, your thumb hovering over the pause key so the DJ's voice would stay off the chorus. The guitar pick is still stuck to the spool with a Blu-Tack ball. Dougie has been playing it on a loop since eight, and he sings the wrong words to every song with the confidence of a man who has never once been asked to repeat himself.

At eleven the promoter pins a hand-lettered sign over the bar: NYE 1999, FIVE QUID, BRING YOUR OWN CARRIER BAG. Dougie copies the phrase onto the back of your ticket in biro, big loops that run off the edge: I'm sick of not living fast. You fold the ticket into the cassette case and tell him it is a terrible line. He says that is why it will still be true in the morning.

At midnight the lights cut out, the hall roars, and somebody's pizza box goes flying across the dance floor. You keep your eyes on the boombox, where the tape is still turning, hissing softly through the chorus you spent all night protecting.