Close-up of a dark geometric tattoo covering the back of a hand and fingers, in a Geometric style, with black painted nails resting on grey knit fabric.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Geometric hand design with black nails

Geometric · Hand · Black and grey · Photo

The photo shows the back of a hand and fingers covered in dense dark linework, with diamond, triangle, chevron and zigzag motifs arranged in bands across the hand and fingers. The lines are crisp and even, with small dotted fills within the patterns, and the ink appears dark brown or black, so it may be henna rather than tattoo ink. The hand rests on a grey knit surface beside a wooden floor, with the composition focused on the design.

Geometric Hand Geometric pattern Diamond Chevron Zigzag Mandala Finger

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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 have cut the same zigzag into pit props since the winter the Deepdale seam took your father, and the men say you can tell a sound prop from a rotten one by how the chevron opens under the blade. Tonight the lamp room smells of wet wool and paraffin, and Mrs Haddow wants a banner for the Welfare hall by Saturday. Nobody has said what it should show, so you carry the chalk tin to the trestle and start drawing.

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A diamond first, then a band of triangles nested inside it, then a zigzag running round the edge like a fuse that never quite reaches the powder. Your sister leans over and says it looks like a map of nowhere. You tell her it is the seam as the shift boss would have seen it from the cage, every turn measured, nothing wasted. She rolls her eyes and goes back to her tea.

The banner is stitched in dark brown wool over three nights, the dotted fills worked in with a bone needle so each one sits exactly where the chalk said. On Saturday you hang it over the hall, and when the stove is lit the diamonds seem to lean and settle as the draught moves through them.

The old men come in from the cold and stand beneath it before the dancing starts. One by one they lift a finger and trace the lines without touching the wool, counting the turns the way they once counted them underground, and for a moment nobody speaks, and nobody needs to say the name that is hanging there in every fold.