Blackwork-style pine trees shaded from dark to pale blue across a man's forearm, running down towards the wrist.

Pine forest fading down a forearm

Realism · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

A tall pine tree sits at the centre of a forest of smaller conifers that fills the outer forearm, rising from the wrist. The trees are built from fine dark linework and dense shading, and the ink fades into soft, lighter tones towards the top of the arm. The ink is a single dark shade, and the photograph is cropped to the forearm, hand and part of the torso against a plain pale wall.

Realism Forearm Pine tree Tree Forest Conifer

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dear Ruth,

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The mist didn't lift again today, so we ate our sandwiches in the Land Rover with the wipers going and the heater ticking. Ian says the planting crews from Dumfries are behind because the ground above Glen Arnan has turned to peat soup. I told him the trees don't mind. They have been standing in worse for longer than the Forestry Commission has had a name.

You'll remember the big Scots pine at the bend of the upper track, the one Dad used to say had been there when the Jacobites came through. We were meant to fell it with the rest of the compartment. Instead Ian tied survey tape to its lowest branch, painted a blue ring round its trunk, and wrote the grid reference in the ledger. Nobody argues with a blue ring. The machines went round it, and the young spruce grew up tight against its base as if they'd been told where to stand.

This morning I walked up alone to check the tape. The rain had worn the paint down to a faint bluish shadow on the bark, almost gone where the sun reaches it and still deep where the moss has taken hold. Standing under it, the whole slope looked like it was going pale at the edges, the way the far hills do when you are leaving them.

I've copied the grid reference onto the back of this page in case the ledger gets lost. Come up at Easter if the roads are clear. Bring the good torch, and I'll show you the tree before the paint goes altogether.

Love, Mo