Black and grey tattoos on a woman's forearm, including a skull with ornate wings, a crescent moon and geometric shapes, with a small tattoo on her ankle as she sits on rocks by the sea.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Forearm tattoos of a skull and geometric shapes

Traditional · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

A woman sits on a rock by rough blue sea water, with her left forearm extended and her face cropped out of frame apart from her lips and chin. Her forearm carries black and grey tattoos: a skull with ornate wings, a solid circle beside it, a dagger-like line and angular geometric shapes. Shading is soft and the linework is dark and clear against her tanned skin, with the ocean spray and rock providing a bright, cool backdrop.

Traditional Geometric Forearm Skull Moon Geometric shape Dagger Floral ornament Ocean Rock

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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 lamp has been dark since the gale took the gallery rail, and the relief boat will not come out until the swell drops, so you climb the iron stairs with a bucket of paraffin and a rag knotted at your wrist. The stairwell smells of salt and old oil. Pinned beside the door is a list in Mr Quill's cramped capitals, thirty-one years of duties on a single sheet, and the third line reads only: CLEAN THE LENS BEFORE THE MOON.

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The lens is a beehive of glass rings, each prism cut at its own angle so that one small flame becomes a beam that reaches Fenmouth and the Dogs on a clear night. You work the rag in circles, then in straight lines, the way he showed you. In the brass bezel a moth has died, its wings spread flat in a pattern like an ornate frame around a skull. You leave it where it lies. Some things belong to the light.

By dusk the sea has gone the colour of slate and then of ink, and the moon heaves up out of the water, a white disc so bright it throws your shadow long across the lantern room. You strike the match, feel the wick take, and watch the glass gather the flame and fling it outward in ribbons. Out on the black water a trawler turns its bow towards you, as if it has been waiting for exactly this.

Below, in the logbook on the table, you find the last entry in his hand, dated the morning he went ashore for good. You take up the pen and write: Lens clean. Light lit. Wind south-west, sea rough, one moth in the brass, and you let it stand.