Black and grey geometric dotwork sleeve covering a man's arm from shoulder to wrist, with stars, circles and mandala-like patterns.

Geometric dotwork sleeve on an arm

Geometric · Shoulder · Black and grey · Photo

A full arm sleeve of geometric patterns, including star-shaped rosettes, overlapping circles, triangles and a lattice pattern near the shoulder. The design is built from fine linework and fine stippled dots, with solid areas kept sparse and the shading soft. The ink is black and grey against a dark background, and the arm is shown from the shoulder down to the wrist with no face visible.

Geometric Dotwork Shoulder Upper arm Forearm Sleeve Mandala Star Circle Triangle Lattice Geometric pattern

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The snow came over the Teller Pass in the third week of the month the shepherds call Thin, and the carter Oswin Hale had no way to tell the road from the drop except by the stones. There were nine hundred of them, set by somebody's grandmother in rings and stars, and each ring marked a place where a man could stand and be sure of his feet.

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His daughter Maren knew the stones better than he did. As a girl she had chalked the dots on each one so the sheep-boys could count them in fog. She told him the old rule while the lead mule stamped at the first junction: take the ring with the most stars inside it, never the one with overlapping circles, because those looped back on themselves and the snow kept travellers walking in them until spring. The mule agreed with her and turned toward the rosettes.

They went down slowly, Oswin feeling each dot with his glove and Maren calling the count into the white. Near the shoulder of the pass the lattice of pale stones ran so close that the mules could not see their own hooves, and for a long hour nobody spoke. Then the wind tore a gap in the cloud and there below, small as a handful of coins, were the lamps of Harrow Fold, lit exactly where the last star pointed.

Oswin never learned who had laid the stones, though the Fold people said it was a woman who drew the whole pass on her arm so she would not lose the way home. Maren kept the chalk. Every autumn she still marks one dot on the sixth stone, for the rule has never once failed them.