Black blackwork and dotwork tattoo of pine tree silhouettes on a lower leg, with a geometric band above the ankle.

Pine forest silhouette on a calf

Blackwork · Calf · Black and grey · Photo

A lower leg carries a black tattoo of tall pine tree silhouettes against a shaded, dotted background that fades out towards the bottom. A band of geometric diamond and cross motifs runs around the leg just above the ankle. The work is in solid black ink and stippled dots, with no colour, set against a blurred grassy outdoor background.

Blackwork Dotwork Geometric Calf Pine tree Tree Forest Silhouette Cross Diamond pattern

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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

The last cart of ore went down the hill on a Tuesday, and by Friday Mother had stopped laying a place for Anders at supper. Nobody at the Halvard pit said the seam was finished. They said it had gone thin, which is what men say when they mean the same thing and would rather not hear it over the potatoes. I was nineteen and had been told I was too young to understand, so I went up the old track to the pines instead, where nobody could tell me anything.

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The pines stood past the last spoil heap, black against a sky that never got properly dark that time of year. Anders had taught me to read them. The tall one with the bent crown marked the north shaft, and the three young ones that leaned together like gossips meant water underfoot. Below the trees the ground went to grey cinder, then to a fine speckled dust, where the older men said the forest had given up the fight and let the mine have the rest.

Ruth at the chapel stitched a strip of red and blue cloth for every boy going underground, diamonds and little crosses to keep the dark honest. Anders wore his until it faded to grey. That night I copied the pattern onto the back of a shift card, stitch by stitch, and carried it to the travelling artist who worked out of the bakery on market days. He asked where I wanted it. I said somewhere I could see it when I walked.

The next morning I left by the road that ran past the pines. In the wing mirror the trees shrank until they were a dark line on the hill, no taller than a thumb held at arm's length, the way Anders used to measure the distance to the shaft.