Black and grey realism tattoo of misty pine trees fading into fog across the upper arm.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Misty pine forest on upper arm

Realism · Upper arm · Black and grey · Photo

A tattoo of a tall pine forest rises up the outer upper arm, with dark conifer silhouettes in the foreground and paler, softer trees receding into mist behind them. The linework is minimal, and the forms are built mainly through soft grey shading and blended washes that create depth. The image is entirely black and grey, with a neutral skin tone and a blurred indoor background.

Realism Upper arm Pine tree Forest Mist Conifer Landscape

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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

Come closer, the lot of you, and mind the cable on the floor, it bites. You want the old story of the Firwood? Right. Nobody living has walked under real trees, but my grandmother did, and her grandmother before her, and that's near enough to count.

Keep reading

Before the Drowning of the Lowlands, when the sea still kept to its own side of the wall, the Firwood stood on the ridge above Carrick Hollow. Tall things they were, black-green and needled, their tops lost in the cloud. The fog came up off the river every morning like something breathing out, and it hung between the trunks so thick a child could walk into a tree and not know it was there. Old Ada Penhallow kept the last lamp-house at the forest's edge, and she was the one who taught the sheep to find their way home by the sound of the bell.

The year the bell cracked, a boy came up from the valley asking for the lamp. He wanted to take it to his sister, lost somewhere in the grey. Ada gave it to him with one rule: never step off the path you can still hear. He went. The fog took his lamp by the second hour and his voice by the third, but the bell kept ringing, faint and steady, and he followed it out.

Here's the thing I'm telling you for. When he came back, nobody could say which of the trees had been the nearest, only that they seemed to lean in closer as he passed, like tall folk stooping to listen. His sister came out behind him, holding his hand. Ada looked at them both and said nothing at all, just went back in and wound the clock.

Now, that's the whole of it. Mind you put your coins in the box on the way out.