Two black and grey tattoos: a dotwork and fine line geometric eye in a triangle on the inner forearm, and a traditional style swallow on the back of a hand.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Geometric eye on a forearm and swallow on a hand

Geometric · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

The left image shows a fine line and dotwork geometric design on the inner forearm, with an eye inside a triangle surrounded by overlapping circles, arcs and straight construction lines. The right image shows a swallow in flight across the back of a hand, with shaded feathers and defined outlines. Both tattoos are rendered in black and grey ink against plain skin and a textured fabric background.

Geometric Dotwork Traditional Forearm Hand Eye Triangle Circle Geometric line Swallow Bird Hand Forearm

Find an artist for this

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

The swallows came back to the harbour wall the spring the Morwenna went missing, and old Tamsin Pascoe said they were counting the boats. She kept a slate propped by the net loft door. On it she had chalked a circle inside a circle, with straight lines crossing through like spokes, and at the heart of it a triangle with an eye set in its middle. She said the lines were how the sea was measured: the arc where the tide turned, the straight run from the lighthouse to the bell buoy. The eye was for looking.

Keep reading

Young Ellis mended nets beside her and asked why she bothered drawing what everyone already knew. Nine boats went out from Porthcarne each morning, and she could tell him which would come back by the way the swallows dipped over the water. When one landed on the back of his hand and would not leave, she only nodded and said it had chosen him for the day. He flicked it off twice and it came back twice, so he gave up and let it sit there while he knotted cord.

The weather turned in the afternoon. The fleet was still out, and the sky went the colour of pewter. Ellis ran to the wall and found the swallows flying so low they nearly touched the swell, wheeling in a tight knot above the channel. Tamsin came up behind him, breathing hard. Follow the birds, not the lines, she said. The lines tell you where the rocks are. The birds tell you where the wind means to go.

He went down to the slipway with the lifeboat man and watched the Gannet's lantern come round the point, then the rest, one after another, flying in on the turn of the swallows. When the last hull was up on the shingle, Ellis went back to the loft. Tamsin had wiped the slate clean with her sleeve, then drawn the circles again, the eye again, and in the corner a small bird with its beak pointed at the harbour mouth.