Full arm sleeve tattoo in dotwork and geometric style, showing an eye, a mandala, rainbows and a stylised figure, running from the upper arm down the forearm.

Geometric dotwork arm sleeve with an eye

Dotwork · Upper arm · Mixed · Photo

The sleeve combines an eye within a kite-shaped panel, a dotted mandala, two rainbow arcs and a stylised geometric figure at the lower end. Fine dots and hatched lines build the shading, with clean outlines separating the sections. Olive green and muted tones sit alongside black and grey, and the design wraps down the arm against a plain indoor background.

Dotwork Geometric Upper arm Forearm Eye Mandala Rainbow Figure Geometric shape Dot Stitches

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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

Mother Wenna would not let me touch the eye until I had pricked the paper pattern with a needle, one hole for every star she named. There were four hundred and twelve, and she checked each against the almanac while I sucked my thumb and waited for the wind to drop off the harbour wall. The kite was a diamond of green oiled silk, the eye stitched at its heart so that it could see weather coming before the gulls did.

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The stitches were the hard part. Along the spine ran a line of black knots, each a little cross of waxed thread, and every cross had to sit exactly a finger's width from the last or the string would sing wrong in a gale. I was eleven. I made eleven mistakes that first week and she unpicked every one without a word, which was worse than shouting.

On the night of the first storm the rainbow arcs were still tacky with dye, and Wenna took the kite up the cliff path alone. I watched from the window as the eye turned slowly over the bay, reading the sky. Then it dipped twice, the signal she had taught me, meaning the boats were to stay in. Nobody went out. By morning the harbour was full of driftwood and two hulls had not come home, but the kite was still standing on the cliff with every stitch holding.

I keep her needle in a tin on my own loft shelf now. I prick my patterns one star at a time, and when the wind rises I climb the cliff path with a kite under my arm and check the knots before I check the sky.