Close-up of a fine line black wave tattoo on the inner forearm, near the wrist, with a blonde-haired person and a dark top in the background.

Fine line wave on the inner forearm

Fine line · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

A single thin black line forms a stylised wave, with a curling crest that spirals back towards the body of the swell. The linework is delicate and even, with no shading or fill, and the ink sits on pale skin against a blurred background of blonde hair and a dark top. The tattoo is placed diagonally across the inner forearm, close to the wrist, and fills only a small part of the frame.

Fine line Forearm Wave Line Ocean

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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

You learn the sea from the fourteenth floor of Tern House in pieces: a grey strip between the chip shop roof and the Co-op car park, and the white lines that break on the breakwater when the wind is down. Your mum says the wind off it has teeth. Every morning you press your forehead to the balcony door and count the breakers, and you have never once seen one curl over the way the postcards show.

Keep reading

Mr Abara on the eleventh floor used to surf at Tynemouth before his knees gave out. One Thursday he finds you waiting for the lift that doesn't come and takes a biro from his cardigan. On the back of a gas bill he draws a long line rising from the bottom corner, then the crest pulling back in on itself like a hand closing. "That's the bit that gets you," he says. "It's always going back to where it came from."

You fold the bill into your coat pocket and forget it until the Saturday you ride the number 7 to the front, sit on the sea wall and unfold it on your knee. The wind takes the corner. You grab, miss, and it goes over the railing, a pale square tumbling down onto the sand. You don't go after it. You watch the tide come in and lift it off the beach, and then it is just more water.

That night you take the biro to the inside of your wrist and draw the wave from memory. The first attempts come out too thick, the crest too loose. The fourth one folds back exactly where it should, and you sit very still with the pen lifted, because for once your hand already knows where the line is going.