Black and grey dotwork tattoo of an impossible cube inside a dotted hexagon, with a triangle below, on a forearm, shown twice as a matching pair.

Matching geometric cube tattoos on forearms

Dotwork · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

Two matching forearm tattoos show a cube-like shape drawn as a hexagon with an optical illusion, set inside a dotted hexagon outline. Below each is a downward-pointing triangle with a smaller inverted triangle, edged with small dots. The shading is built from stippled dots, creating a grey gradient on the cube faces and triangles, with solid black areas for contrast, all in black ink on a dark background.

Dotwork Geometric Blackwork Forearm Cube Hexagon Triangle Dotted line Geometric pattern

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Tuesday, 14 March. Mr Okonedo sent me up to the loft above the pattern shop at seven, with the drawing board and the old brass dividers, because the bench is too low for the plans. The plans are a box. Nobody in the works can say what the box is for. It sits on the page as a cube inside a hexagon drawn with dots like a row of rivet heads, and yet when you follow the inner edges with a pencil your eye goes round and round and comes back to where it started, looking the other way.

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Wednesday. I measured the cube three times with the rule and got three different widths. Mr Okonedo laughed when I told him, then stopped laughing when I showed him the sums. He said the draughtsman who drew it, a Mr Hollin who left in 1931 without his coat, used to stipple the faces with a needle instead of a pen, one dot at a time, so the grey would come up slowly under the eye like weather. I tried it. It took me until the lamps went out and my fingers ached, and when I stood back the cube had turned itself inside out.

Thursday. Found the triangles beneath it at the back of the drawer, pinned to the same sheet, pointing down toward the floor like a plumb line. The small inverted one sits inside the large one exactly where the dotted line says it should, which is the only part of the whole drawing that is simple. I have decided it is a set of instructions for something we have not built yet. I have also decided not to tell Mr Okonedo that when I close my eyes now, I can see the inside of the box.