Four people hold their bent arms together, each with a black and grey tattoo of a curved, ribbed seed pod on the forearm near the elbow.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Matching seed pod tattoos on four forearms

Realism · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

Four bent arms are shown side by side, each with a single tattoo of a curved, segmented shape that resembles a seed pod or similar natural object. The linework is fine and the ribbed sections are shaded in grey and black to give a three-dimensional look. The ink is monochrome against light skin, and the arms are arranged close together in the frame.

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

Come closer, the lot of you, because the tide won't wait and neither will the tale. Mrs Pellow kept the chandlery at the bottom of Fish Lane, and every October her sycamore by the slipway let go of its pods, a thousand of them spinning down onto the cobbles like little brown propellers. Nobody had ever sown them. They just grew where the wind dropped them, in the gutters and under the nets.

Keep reading

Four girls lived on that lane the year the net-mender's boat went out and did not come back in. Ada, Bet, Hanne and the youngest, Sal, who was nine and had not yet learned to be frightened of anything. They spent their afternoons racing the pods down the hill from the church steps, and the rule was that the winner got a curved seed pod marked onto her forearm with a sharpened nib and a thumb of soot from Mrs Pellow's stove. Their mothers said it was a dreadful thing to do. The girls said it was the only way to keep a race honest.

Hanne won the last race, though she always swore Sal had cheated by sneezing. The four of them sat on the harbour wall that evening with their elbows bent and their arms pressed together, each one showing off the same ribbed little shape, shaded dark where the soot had pooled. Sal said that when the boat came home they would show the captain. The boat never came home. The girls grew up and moved away, but every spring after, the sycamore dropped its keys, and somebody always stooped to pick one up.

More like this

Four wrists held together, each with a small black fine line tattoo: an anchor, an infinity symbol, a mushroom-like shape and a bare tree.
Four small wrist tattoos: anchor, infinity, tree, mushroom
Two forearms hold a paper coffee cup, each showing a matching small black fine line arrow tattoo with an infinity symbol on the shaft.
Matching arrow and infinity tattoos on wrists
Black and grey shaded chess king and queen tattoos on the forearms of two people holding hands in a black and white photo.
Matching chess king and queen tattoos on forearms
Black silhouette tattoos of a figure on a forearm, with cursive script reading Michael Jackson on another forearm, photographed with the arms crossed.
Silhouette and script forearm tattoos
Two small black scissor tattoos in a simple fine line style, one on each of two fingers of a hand resting on a knee.
Pair of scissor tattoos on two fingers
Two hands holding a small branch, with a tiny black fine line tattoo on each wrist, one a short curved stroke and the other a Y-like shape.
Small fine line marks on two wrists
Two wrists pressed together, each with one half of a fine line yin yang tattoo, one outlined in black and one solid black, both on the inner wrist.
Matching yin yang wrist tattoos
Two forearms pressed together showing matching black fine line script tattoos reading Follow me and I'll follow you, arranged in a circle around a small outlined motif on the forearm.
Matching circular script forearm tattoos
Black and grey tattoo of three flying bats on the side of a neck, behind the ear, with shaded wings and bodies.
Three bats flying across the side of a neck
Two people press their inner forearms together, each showing half of a circular fine-line script tattoo that reads follow me and I'll follow you around a small outline motif.
Circular script quote tattoo on two forearms
Close-up of two small solid black bird silhouettes in flight on the inner forearm near the wrist.
Two small birds on a wrist
Black line tattoo of a heart outline enclosing two small birds on the inside of a wrist, with the palm raised toward the camera.
Heart with two birds on a wrist

From the plentytattoo archive, uploaded by a user. Is this your work? Ask for credit or removal.