Black dotwork pine tree tattoo running up the forearm, with a solid dark crown and a fine trunk line fading into stippled shading.

Pine tree on a forearm

Dotwork · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

A tall conifer is tattooed vertically along the arm, with a thin central trunk and branches built from fine stippled dots. The crown at the top is solid black and the lower branches fade into lighter, sparser dots toward the base. The image is a close, straight-on photo against a plain background, with the tree filling most of the frame.

Dotwork Botanical Forearm Pine tree Conifer Tree Branches Trunk

Find an artist for this

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

At twenty past three the lift on the east side stuck between the second and third floors, and Maureen Tait, who had done nights at Carrick Vale for twenty-two years, sat on the step stool with her radio and waited for Facilities to answer. Through the stairwell window she could see the one pine the trust had never cut down, standing alone past the bike sheds, its top black against the orange of the car park lamps.

Keep reading

Dev Okafor, the new porter, had asked her on his first shift why the tree was left. She told him what her mother used to say: the crown is where the light still reaches, so you keep your eyes up. The lower branches go thin and pale because they get less sun, and nobody blames them for it. He laughed and said that sounded like a leaflet. She said it was a lot of things, and most of them were leaflets.

At half three the radio crackled and a voice asked for a lift engineer by name, which was the sign it would be a long one. Maureen stayed where she was. The stairwell was cold and smelled of bleach and of someone's wet coat. She counted the lit windows on the ward opposite, the few still awake, and thought about the branches, how each dot had been put there by hand, one at a time, so the tree would look as if the wind had only just stopped.

The lift shuddered and the doors parted onto the third floor. Dev was already there with a torch and a flask, and he held out a cup without asking. 'Still standing?' he said. 'Still standing,' she said, and took the tea, and looked back once through the window at the tree, its top still dark against the lamps, its lower branches fading into the night.