Black geometric star motifs in a repeating pattern tattooed across the back of a clenched hand and onto the knuckles, in a Japanese-influenced geometric style.

Geometric star pattern across the back of a hand

Geometric · Hand · Black and grey · Photo

A clenched fist is shown from the front of the knuckles, with a repeating pattern of black geometric star and flower motifs covering the back of the hand and extending onto the fingers. The linework is solid black fill with sharp, angular segments and small open centres, giving a crisp, graphic finish. The ink is entirely black on pale skin, and the shallow depth of field keeps the hand sharp while the background blurs into neutral tones.

Geometric Dotwork Hand Star Geometric pattern Flower Knuckle Hand

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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 closer, the lamp is low and the story is older than the oil in it. Yes, you, with the river mud still on your boots. Right. There was a ferrywoman on the Salt Reach called Ilse Varnady who could not sleep unless she had counted something first. Sheep through a gate, rivets along the hull, the drips from the sluice roof. Her grandfather carved her a box of wooden blocks, each one a six-pointed star with a small hollow at its heart, and she laid them out on the shed floor every night so her thoughts would have somewhere to go.

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The Reach was mapped badly in those days. The council's charts showed deep water where there was only mud, and mud where the old current ran strong enough to drown a cart. Ilse did not argue with the charts. She argued with her blocks. She laid them edge to edge, star touching star, and found that the pattern never repeated the same way twice until she had walked four thousand paces along the bank. Then she understood that the pattern was a road, and the open hollows were where the channel ran deep.

So she rowed by the hollows. People laughed at her, and then they stopped laughing when the wet season came and the big barges ran aground in the places the charts swore were safe. Her boat slipped through the gaps like thread through cloth, bow pointed at the pale lamps of the mill towns, and she never once looked at the stars themselves.