Upper arm and shoulder tattoo of a thin-line circular Gallifreyan seal and a grey shaded TARDIS police box within blue and purple watercolour splashes.

Gallifreyan seal and TARDIS on upper arm

Upper arm · Mixed · Photo

A thin black outline of a circular Gallifreyan-style seal sits over the shoulder, with a grey shaded TARDIS police box below it on the upper arm. Soft blue, purple and pink washes spread behind and around both motifs, with fine speckles scattered towards the lower left. The photograph is taken from the side, showing the upper arm and shoulder with a plain grey top and a kitchen background.

Upper arm Shoulder Tardis Police box Circle Ink splash

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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

You have been copying the same line for three days, the ringed Gallifreyan verse for the abbot's psalter, and Brother Anselm keeps telling you the circle must close without a gap or the prayer will leak out of it. Your ink is the blue Brother Wilfrid ground from lapis in the cellar, and it will not sit still on the vellum. It blooms every time you breathe near it, so you have learned to hold your breath like a novice waiting for the bell.

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On the fourth night the lamp guttered and something stood in the cloister garth where the rain had pooled. It was a tall box painted the dark blue of a winter sky, with a lantern on its roof and a word across its top that you could not read because you were not yet practised in the script of the outside. A door opened without a sound. The air inside smelled of cold brass and oranges, and a voice said, not unkindly, that you had drawn the seal the wrong way round.

You protested that the seal was copied from the abbey's own charter. The voice laughed and said the charter had been written by someone who had never seen the stars turn backwards. It asked you to fetch your pen. Together you traced the circle again, and this time the ink ran past the margin into a sky of violet and pink, spreading over the parchment until the cloister wall dissolved into weather.

When the bell rang for matins you were back at your desk, ink drying on your fingers, the psalter closed. The ring was perfect. Only a faint speckle of blue remained on your sleeve, and Brother Anselm, peering over your shoulder, asked where you had learned such a clean line. You said you had been given the correct orientation, and you did not say by whom.