Five black ink sketches on paper of continuous line designs with dotted starts, spirals and infinity-style loops, shown as possible tattoo flash.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Five line-work swirl and loop sketches

Black and grey · Flash

Five black ink sketches on pale paper show continuous single lines that begin with a short dotted lead-in, then wind into zigzag coils, figure-eight loops and spirals. The linework is uniform and bold with no shading, and each design has a different length and arrangement of loops. The sheet is photographed at an angle on a flat surface, with the drawings running diagonally across the frame.

Swirl Spiral Loop Infinity Dot Line Sketch

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

The signalman at Hollin Halt had a daughter called Marrow who would not sit still. Every evening she took the spool of tarred twine from the hook beside the lamp and ran it out along the platform, dropping a small dot of ink at the start so she would know where her count began. One loop for each train that passed without stopping, one coil for each that did. Her father said it was a foolish way to keep time, but he never once asked her to stop.

Keep reading

The winter the snow came early, the trains stopped coming altogether. Marrow kept on regardless. She wound figures of eight through the frost, wove zigzags wherever the wind pushed the twine sideways, and when the spool ran short she unpicked a strip from her mother's old shawl and knotted it on. By February the line ran the length of the platform and out past the water tower, and men from the depot began walking down to look at it, the way a person looks at a map of somewhere they once meant to visit.

The thaw came in March, and so did the engine, slow and coughing, following the twine along the rails as a dog follows a scent. The driver said afterwards that he had seen the knots from a mile off and taken them for signal lamps. Marrow's father wound the spool up that night and hung it back on its hook. He left the last loop unpicked, the spiral she had made for the engine, and nobody at Hollin Halt ever asked him to undo it.