Black and white photo of a person's lower legs from behind, with blackwork geometric tattoos of concentric arcs, solid black bands and hexagons on the calves and behind the knees.

Geometric blackwork on both calves

Blackwork · Calf · Black and grey · Photo

The photograph shows the back of a person's lower legs and feet, standing on a chair. Both legs carry matching blackwork designs: solid black bands, nested concentric arcs, chevron-like stripes and a honeycomb of hexagon outlines above the knees. The linework is crisp and the tattoos are entirely black and grey against pale skin, with a plain, softly lit studio background.

Blackwork Geometric Calf Geometric shape Hexagon Honeycomb Chevron Leg Feet

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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

Dear Owen, the chapel roof has lost another three slates since Sunday and Mrs Pryce swears the wind will have the rest before Michaelmas, so you can stop asking me about the weather and tell me about the new face instead. Your father would have wanted the particulars. He always said a man should know the shape of the ground before he sends his lamp into it.

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The drawing you posted came folded in four, and I spread it on the table with the flour tin on one corner and the salt on the other. Those little hexagons up the margin are the cells Mr Gwilym says the surveyor marks wherever the seam breaks up and the water gets in. The men have taken to calling the whole district the honeycomb. Mrs Hughes says it is a fine name for a place that wants to swallow people, and I told her to hush in front of the children.

What caught my eye was the rings at the bottom of the sheet, drawn as though someone dropped a stone into still water and sat very still to watch it spread. Your father's old haulage drum has a ring like that worn into the boards by the cable, a dark band polished by a hundred thousand turns. I stood beside it on Thursday and thought how odd it is that the thing which lowers men into the earth should leave such a pretty mark on the wood.

So come home by the long road if you can spare the day, past the chapel and up over the tip, and I will show you the chevrons I have chalked on the back wall, one for each day you are down. Eleven rows already. The cat sleeps in the middle of the arcs I drew on the kitchen flags, and I have not had the heart to sweep them away. Your loving mother, Nell.