Black ink drawing of a symmetrical four-armed ornament with stippled dotwork at its centre, drawn as a tattoo design on paper beside two pens and a pencil.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Four-armed ornament tattoo design sketch

Dotwork · Black and grey · Flash

A pen drawing of a symmetrical cross-like ornament with four arms, each ending in leaf or flame-like scrolls and pointed tips. The centre is filled with fine stippled dots that shade into a round boss, while the arms use clean outlines and small dotted accents. The design sits centred on pale paper, with two black pens and a pencil placed at the top right.

Dotwork Geometric Cross Ornament Symmetrical design Leaf Flame Dot Scroll

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

Dear Hetty, the binnacle fitting is finished, and you will laugh at how long it took me. Captain Pryce wanted a plain brass stay to replace the one the Cape rain had eaten through, but I could not bring myself to make something so bare. I gave it four arms, each curling at the tip like a candle flame bending in a draught, and I took the centre down to a round boss.

Keep reading

That boss nearly finished me. I punched it with a nail set and a steel awl, one dot at a time, three nights running by the forecastle lamp, until it looked like wet sand under a tide-glass. Young Tomas kept asking if I was mad. The cook said I was only doing what the Lascar carpenter in Madras used to do, and that the dots keep the eye from sliding off a thing in bad weather. I do not know if that is true, but I believed him, and I kept at it.

The Captain came down on the last morning with his coffee, turned the piece in the lamplight, and frowned at the lowest arm. He said it looked as though it was pointing the wrong way for home. I told him the flames lean where the wind leans, and that is simply how brass wants to lie. He grunted and said he would have it fixed to the binnacle regardless, because a ship is steered by the thing you can see, not the thing you intended.

When I looked up from my bunk last night, the lamp was through the dots and the centre was scattered with tiny lights, like a harbour seen from a long way out. I thought of you at the window. Write soon, and tell Father the tea in this port tastes of tar.

Your loving brother, Sam