Three photos of black and grey forearm tattoos showing bare trees, a moon, flying birds, a horse and rider silhouette, and a gate by water, in a blackwork and realism style on the forearm.

Forest, moon and horse rider forearm tattoos

Blackwork · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

The three panels show forearm tattoos of a bare tree under a large moon with birds in flight, a leafless tree above a silhouetted horse and rider over a pine forest, and a tree beside an ornate gate and reflective water. The work combines bold solid black silhouettes with fine hatching and grey shading for the foliage, sky and ground. Everything is rendered in black ink and greys, with the compositions framed by the arm's curve.

Blackwork Realism Forearm Tree Moon Bird Horse Water Forest Pine tree Silhouette Landscape

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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

At half past three the ward goes quiet in the way you have learnt to distrust, the monitors settling into their small agreed rhythms. You stand at the window of the side room with a clipboard you have not written on since two, and watch the moon sit low over the car park. Beyond the lamp posts, the old beech by the chapel has been bare for weeks, its branches as fine and stubborn as the pencil drawings you made as a child.

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Mr Okafor in bed four asks for the blind to be raised. He is ninety-one and has talked about horses since the evening, about a grey mare called Penny who would only cross the ford if he sang to her. You tell him the moon is out. 'That's how you know a ride's coming,' he says, and you laugh, because it is easier than explaining the drip rate.

Around four, a flock of starlings lifts off the chapel roof, a hundred dark strokes unpicking themselves from the branches. He watches them with his eyes closed. 'Pine woods behind our farm,' he says. 'You'd hear the riders before you saw them.' You check his pulse, which is steady, and his oxygen, which is fine, and you find you are still standing there with the clipboard pressed to your chest when the first grey light comes up over the car park.

The handover is at seven. In the notes you write: slept from 03:10, comfortable, asked after the mare. Then you walk out past the iron gate and under the beech, and the birds have already gone.