Fine line black tattoo of a geometric, faceted horse on the inner upper arm of a person wearing a rolled denim shirt.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Geometric horse on upper arm

Fine line · Upper arm · Black and grey · Photo

A single-line tattoo of a horse in mid-stride, built from angular, faceted segments that give it an origami-like look. The thin black linework is uniform and the horse is shown in profile with its head raised. The skin is pale and the image is cropped to the upper arm, with a denim shirt sleeve rolled above the tattoo.

Fine line Geometric Upper arm Horse

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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

Sit down, and mind the kettle, it's older than your mother. You'll want to hear about the horse Dorothea Pryce folded out of a Thursday tram timetable, because she never once used scissors, and that's the whole trouble with it.

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She kept a shop above a dry cleaner's on Bridge Street, and at night, when the last 43 had groaned past under the window, she'd sit with the lamp turned low and fold. Every crease had to be made with the thumbnail, every corner sharpened until it could slice a cheese. The horse took her nine nights. On the tenth it stood up on the sill, took three steps on its angled legs, and slipped out through the gap under the sash as though it had been waiting its whole life for a draught.

It ran the wet pavements in the small hours. Cabbies swore they saw a pale flicker at the lights on Cathedral Road, quick and cornered, never once curving. Dorothea followed in her coat over her nightdress and found it at last on the far side of the canal, head raised, one forefoot lifted as if the next step were a question. She said, 'Come home,' and it looked at her with two straight-edged eyes and did not stop.

She understood then that it would never be still for her, and that a paper horse only holds its shape while it is running. So she let it go. In the morning the lock-keeper found a single sheet on the towpath, creased into sharp facets with no fold it could have made itself. He kept it. It's still in his drawer, and if you lift it out you'll find it flat and blank, with only the faint lines of someone who was trying to be quick.