Black ink blackwork sleeve with paisley, floral and mandala-style motifs covering the upper arm and forearm of a person lying on a white sheet.

Full blackwork ornamental sleeve on an arm

Blackwork · Upper arm · Black and grey · Photo

A woman lies on a white sheet with one arm extended, and that arm is covered from shoulder to wrist by a dense ornamental sleeve. The design uses bold black outlines, solid black fills and fine dotted and scrolled detailing arranged in paisley, floral and mandala-like panels. The image is dark and in black and grey, with the black top and low lighting emphasising the high contrast of the ink.

Blackwork Botanical Upper arm Forearm Mandala Paisley Flower Leaves Ornament Scrollwork Sleeve

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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

Nobody at the Palais ever asked where the black lace came from, which suited me, because I was the one who sewed it. Every Saturday from October I sat in the cloakroom under a bare bulb, working dark thread through net while the band tuned up through the wall. Mr Haskell wanted long black sleeves for the new singer with the Melody Kings, to match the band's new suits, and he wanted them unlike anything else on the floor. So I took my mother's paisley shawl from its nail, the one from Bombay that came home in her brother's kitbag, and traced its teardrops onto brown paper with a stub of carbon.

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The pattern grew from the cuff upward. Mandalas first, a round sun at the wrist with petals I stitched in pairs so the eye would wander. Then the paisley bent its shoulder at the elbow, and I dotted the solid fields with seed stitch so the black looked like night seen through a window. By the third week my fingers knew the scrolls better than my own name. Haskell came in each Friday to check the seams and never once looked at my face.

On the last night the singer came to the cloakroom to try them on. She lifted her hands under the bulb and the whole ornament seemed to wake, flowers and leaves climbing from the cuffs like ivy up a wall. She asked who had drawn it. I said my mother, which was half true, since the shawl had been hers. Then the band struck up and the singer walked out onto the sprung floor, and I stood in the doorway and watched those dark sleeves turn beneath the glitter ball, the pattern running ahead of her, until the lights came up and I could no longer tell where the lace ended and the dancing began.