Black fine line geometric tattoo on an upper arm, with stacked circles, arcs, vertical lines, a small diamond and arrow tips.

Fine line geometric arc and diamond on upper arm

Fine line · Upper arm · Black and grey · Photo

A vertical arrangement of fine black linework runs down the upper arm, built from a full circle, a partial arc with dotted segments, a small diamond and a circle at the base. Thin vertical lines, small dots and tiny arrow-like tips link the shapes together. The ink is black on pale skin, and the composition is centred and narrow, with soft focus across the skin around it.

Fine line Geometric Upper arm Circle Arc Diamond Line Dot Arrow Geometric shape

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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

Mind the brass, Ada, it bites. Your great-grandfather never could abide a loose pin, and that's why the harbour clock at Wrenmouth kept true for forty years while the church one wandered off like a drunk on a Sunday. Come closer. I'll tell you the part they never put in the leaflet.

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Tobias Greave drew the thing on a slate the winter before the big surge. A full ring for the sun, a broken arc for the tide that never lay still, a little diamond for the weight that pulled the whole works down through the tower. The dots were where the pins went. The fine upright lines were strings, tying moon to water, and the tiny arrow tips were there so the eye knew which way the hours wanted to run.

Then came the night of the surge. The sea got into the lower chamber and the arc seized, and the weight swung loose from its diamond and hung there, knocking against the stone. Edith, who was only fourteen and had swept the workshop for two years without anyone thinking she listened, ran up the tower in the dark with a lamp clamped in her teeth. She found the pin at the base, the little circle that holds everything to the earth, and she pressed it home with her thumb until it bled. Then she lowered the weight one notch and the arc swung back into true.

Every spring, when the tide turns at the harbour wall, you can still hear the diamond knock once against the stone. Old Wrenmouth folk say that's Edith telling the sea it has been told.