Symmetrical ornamental scrollwork tattoo across the upper arm and shoulder, shading from dark blue at the top to bright red at the bottom.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Ornamental scrollwork on upper arm and shoulder

Shoulder · Colour · Photo

The tattoo is a symmetrical ornamental design of interlocking scrolls and curling filigree lines, with small dots placed along the lower edge. The linework is bold and solid, and the pattern fills the upper arm and shoulder, narrowing toward the elbow. The ink fades from dark blue and purple at the top to pink and red at the bottom, against a plain skin background with a blue garment visible at the edge of the frame.

Shoulder Upper arm Ornamental pattern Scrollwork Filigree Dot Gradient

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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

Stand under the awning, the rain's come early and the fish men have all gone home. Right, then. There was a filigree smith called Tobias Veer who kept a stall by the church steps, and he could draw a scroll so fine that the wind gave up trying to break it. People brought him spoons to mend and he sent them away with their own initials turned into birds.

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One February a widow came up the hill with a looking glass in a cracked frame and asked him to wind it in something that would hold her grief without pinching. He worked through the frost with a candle stub clamped to his bench. Every morning the iron was hotter and every evening it cooled, and the colour went with it, from the cold blue at the crown down through the purples to rose and then red at the foot, where the forge had kissed the metal last. He pressed a row of dots along the lower edge with a bone punch, one for each day the widow had not been able to speak of her husband, and he counted them aloud so he would not lose his place.

When it was done she did not come back to pay. The frame sat on his table until the spring markets, and folk stopped to look at it and then at themselves, and swore their reflections had shifted colour. Tobias said it was only the light coming off the stalls. He never sold it. Some say it still hangs in a window above the bakers, and if you stand in the right place at dusk you will see a scroll of blue unwinding into red on your own shoulder.

And those dots along the bottom? That is where he stopped counting. Mind the step on your way out, it's slick with the rain.