Black line drawing of a circular design of interlocking circles and arcs in a Gallifreyan-style script, shown on a white background.

Interlocking circles line design

Geometric · Black and grey · Flash

A circular design built from interlocking arcs, outlined circles and solid dots, with thin radiating lines connecting the shapes. The linework is crisp and uniform, with some areas of solid black filling the smaller circles. The design is drawn in black on white with no shading, and the composition sits in a large circle with a second, smaller overlapping circle in the lower right.

Geometric Circle Arc Dot

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

Dear Marguerite, the gas ring on the landing is the only light I trust tonight, so forgive the smudges. You asked why I kept my post at Hollis and Pryce after they shifted the repair benches to the arcade. It was the watch that came in March, folded inside a clerk's wages envelope with no postmark and no hands. Its face is a crowd of circles, some hollow, some filled black like spilt ink, and the thin lines running between them all lean toward one solid dot at the centre.

Keep reading

I spent three weeks copying it into my ledger. The big circles are the words, the dots set inside them give the vowels, and the angle of each spoke tells you where a sentence begins. Read it the way the lines point and it stops being a picture. It was an appointment: come to the square under St Ann's clock at midnight, bring the watch, and do not wind it until the small circle that overlaps the rest lies flat against the larger one.

Last Thursday I went. The rain had made the cobbles shine like the backs of beetles, and the clock showed a quarter to twelve for the whole hour I stood there. A man in a grey coat crossed the square with a watch cupped in his palm, nearly the twin of mine, its dial turned up to the sky. He didn't speak. He simply pressed his face to mine so the two faces overlapped, and I felt the small circle slide into place with a click like a bolt going home.

When I looked down, both hands pointed at twelve and the clock above us began to tick again. I'm writing from the landing because I have not yet decided whether to tell Hollis. Please keep this letter, and if I don't come back for it, read the lines again. They still point to the middle.