Black and grey Japanese-style wave tattoo with fine linework and dotwork shading on the inner arm.

Great wave tattoo with dotwork shading

Japanese · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

A large breaking wave with curling, foam-tipped crests is drawn in fine black linework, in the style of a classic Japanese woodblock print. Stippled dotwork fades out behind the wave, creating a soft shaded backdrop within a triangular area. The image is in black and grey, with the wave centred and the arm filling the frame.

Japanese Dotwork Forearm Wave Sea Ocean

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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

The glass in the lamp room is cracked again. I told the man from the district office it was the sea and not the wind, and he wrote something down with the careful face of a clerk who has never been wet. The water came over the north rock on Tuesday, higher than the ledge where Father kept the tin of matches. I stood at the rail with the lamp still turning and watched the bay stand up on its hind legs.

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It did not crash the way the boys in Carrack Bay say it does. It hung there, a long grey curl with white fingers at the top, and the spray came off the lip like flour shaken from a sack. Father had a print pinned by the kitchen range, a wave much like that one, drawn in black lines so fine you could count the claws of the foam. Ma called it foreign and said the sea never looked so tidy. I think she was wrong. I think the artist only had to stand still long enough to see it.

Below the crest the sky went soft and speckled, the way dusk does over the water when the rain is still thinking about it. You could not tell where the wave ended and the haze began. I kept my eyes on that place until the swell dropped back into its ordinary grumbling, and then I went down and made the tea.

Tell Ada the matches are in the drawer under the tide tables, and do not let the district man near the stove. I have started counting the waves the way Father did, one, two, and then the one that means business. Your brother, Tom.