Forearm tattoo of a vintage microscope beneath a teal outlined diamond and the word True, in black and grey shading with halftone dotwork and teal accents.

Microscope and diamond on a forearm

Dotwork · Forearm · Mixed · Photo

A vintage microscope sits on the forearm beneath a teal outlined diamond and the script word True, set against a grey halftone dot background. The microscope and circular forms are shaded in black and grey with fine detail, while the diamond outline, a drop shape and parts of the background use flat mint teal ink. The composition runs vertically along the forearm, with the microscope at the lower half and the diamond rising above it.

Dotwork Geometric Forearm Diamond Script Drop Circle

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

The abbot said the glass would lie, because glass always lies when a man wants it to. Brother Oswin said nothing. He set the slide beneath the brass tube and turned the small wheel until a drop of well water sharpened into a country of moving things, each one bent like a coin, each one going about its business as though no one were watching.

Keep reading

The village at the foot of the hill had buried nine children that spring. Their mothers came up the track with jugs and asked what was in the water. Oswin told them he did not know, and that was the first true thing he had said to anyone in a month. He could only show them. He let the abbot look first, then the miller's wife, then the boy who carried the jugs up the hill on a pole.

The abbot looked a long time. Then he took a diamond from the reliquary, a stone a dead bishop had left for its hardness, and scratched a word into the cellar window: TRUE. It was not a joke, he said. A stone that cuts glass cannot be argued with. Boil the water, he told them, and let the glass be the judge.

That autumn the abbey bell rang less often. Oswin kept the microscope polished. When the wind came off the moor the lens caught the light and threw a small pale green spot onto the wall, which the children said was the water's ghost, and which he let them believe.