Close view of a woman's upper arm with a black fine line tattoo of a thin stem and small loop, styled in single line work.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Fine line stem tattoo on upper arm

Fine line · Upper arm · Black and grey · Photo

A woman rests one hand on her opposite shoulder, showing a small black tattoo on the outer upper arm. The tattoo is a single continuous hairline drawing that curves from a short diagonal stroke into a looping stem. The ink is solid black with no shading, set against plain light skin and a plain pale background.

Fine line Upper arm Line drawing Stem Loop

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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

The gentian was the last thing still flowering on Scarrow Pass that October, and Dad said I'd never get it down the scree with the stalk in one piece. I went anyway. Mist was lifting off the tarn while I knelt on the wet slate, and I could hear the carrier's pony bell two valleys away, which meant Hal was early and I was not.

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I had cut the stem low, the way you do, so the bloom sat short and the long thin stalk bent over my palm like a question. It would never lie flat in a book. I wrapped it once around my forefinger to see what it would do, and it held the shape, loop and all, as if it had been waiting for someone to ask.

Hal came up the zigzag with the pony and a sack of salt, and he saw the flower in my hand before he saw me. He said nothing about the mist or the hour. He took the stem, turned it to the light, and said his sister used to tie her hair ribbons like that before school. Then he tucked it into the pocket of his oilskin, where it would certainly be crushed, and we walked down together with the pony between us, the cairns standing grey on either side like people who had lost their way and decided to wait.

The flower is in the dresser drawer now, pressed flat by the weight of two atlases. It never did lie straight. When the light comes through the kitchen window in March, I lift the page and trace the stalk with my finger, from the short cut at the top down to where it turns back on itself and goes on.