Black and grey realism tattoo of a tall pine tree in a forest fading to black, with a white dog silhouette, on the inner forearm.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Pine tree and dog on a forearm

Realism · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

A tall pine tree with dense, stippled foliage rises up the forearm, its trunk running diagonally across the skin. The ground fades from fine shading into solid black at the base, where a white silhouette of a dog stands out against the dark background. The work is entirely in black ink and greys, with strong contrast and a soft tonal gradient across the forest floor.

Realism Blackwork Forearm Pine tree Tree Forest Dog Silhouette Landscape

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Sit down, sit down, the eleven-forty is never on time, so you may as well hear this while you wait. My father was porter here before me, and his father before him, and the tale he gave me was the one about Bramble and the pines above the cutting at Carrick Halt.

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Bramble was a pale lurcher belonging to Nell Ormerod, the signalman's daughter. Every evening at dusk the dog walked the track to where the line bends into the wood, and there he sat, nose to the rails, until the last coast train came round the curve. He never once went home without the engine's lamp in view. Folk along the platform used to say you could set your watch by him, and in those days nobody set a watch by anything else.

One November the snow came early and thick, and the last train didn't come. Nell took the storm lantern and went looking, but the lamp at the halt had blown out and the wood was black as a cellar. It was Bramble who found the engine, nosed into the ditch under the big lone pine at the top of the cut, the fireman lying wedged and cursing in the cab. Bramble stood on the ballast in a patch of moonlight, pointing the way down the line until Nell saw him and came running.

They say he still stands there on the still nights, a white shape on the black edge of the wood, watching the bend for a train that always comes in. Mind the step as you board. He's not on any timetable, but he has never once been late.