Black and grey blackwork forearm tattoo of bare winter trees, a pine, birds, clouds and a moon, with a dotted fade at the wrist.

Forest, moon and birds on a forearm

Blackwork · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

Four views of a forearm tattoo showing a woodland scene of bare branching trees, a dark pine, a full moon and small flying birds set among soft cloud shapes. The linework is fine and the trunks and branches are shaded with solid black and soft grey washes, while the lower part of the forearm fades into stippled dots. The composition runs from the wrist up to the elbow, with the trees framing the moon and sky.

Blackwork Dotwork Forearm Forest Tree Moon Bird Cloud

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 rooks had nested in the old Scots pine since before the estate changed hands, and Marjorie Dunn would not have them moved. She said so again on Tuesday, when the forester came up the drive with his clipboard and his talk of felling. He wanted the birch cleared from the ridge and the dead wood taken out before the autumn gales. Marjorie stood in the kitchen doorway with flour to her elbows and let him finish.

Keep reading

He left a wooden stake at the edge of the bog, painted orange at the top, and went back down the track in his green van. By evening the mist had lifted off the loch and the sky over the ridge had gone the colour of pewter. Marjorie took the lamp and walked up through the wet bracken. The birch stood bare and black against a moon so full it looked cut from paper, and the clouds ran past it in long grey strips.

The rooks came in low, one at a time, calling to each other like neighbours shutting their doors. She counted them as they settled. Nineteen. She had counted nineteen every autumn for thirty-one years, and every autumn somebody had come up the track with a plan for the trees. The plans never lasted. The birds always did.

She knelt in the wet grass, worked the stake loose from the mud with both hands, and carried it down to the burn. The water took it without a sound. When she turned back, the pine stood black against the moon, and somewhere in its branches one rook said its word, and the rest answered.