Black linework geometric tattoo sleeve on an upper arm and shoulder, with a bird on the back, a flower and city shapes, dotwork shading and small pink and teal dots.

Geometric bird, city and flower tattoos on arm and shoulder

Geometric · Shoulder · Mixed · Photo

A woman's upper back, shoulder and arm are covered in geometric tattoos showing a bird on the shoulder blade, a tall stem with a leaf or flower, and angular building shapes. The bold black outlines are filled with dotwork and hatched patterns, and a few solid pink and teal dots add accents. The design runs vertically down the arm, with the image cropped above the elbow and the sleeve continuing out of frame.

Geometric Dotwork Botanical Shoulder Upper arm Back Bird Flower Leaf Stem Building City Circle Dot Geometric pattern Zigzag 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

You learn the trade of drawing a city from the outside first, the way the old surveyors did, pacing the boundary before you ever set foot inside. Your teacher in the harbour quarter of Ostia keeps a bronze compass in a leather pouch and never lets you hold it longer than it takes to measure a single wall. On the day you finish your first commission, a shrine to a fishermen's god with a bird perched on its lintel, the master turns the drawing upside down and says the bird is the only honest thing on the page. You do not ask what he means.

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The next year the city across the bay asks for a map of its towers, and you walk the ferry route with a slate under your coat. Every tower you count has a flat roof and a hatched shadow, and every shadow falls the same way, toward the sea. At dusk you sit on a stone bollard and fill the outlines with dots, one dot for each sailor who did not come back, though you cannot say how you know their number. A girl selling figs asks what you are doing. You tell her you are keeping count, and she laughs and gives you a fig for free.

When the map goes to the magistrate he sends back a single line: draw the flower again, the one on the drawing with the lotus leaf. It is the only thing in the city he does not recognise. You stand a long while over the blank sheet, the compass cold in your fist, then sketch a tall thin stem rising through the towers, a leaf opening at its top, two small coloured circles beside it, one rose, one teal, the colour of the water where the sailors went under. It is the first map you have ever made that you could not walk.