Black and grey drawing of a tribal tattoo design with spiral and curved bands filled with woven patterns, shown on a white background.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Polynesian-style tribal design with spirals

Blackwork · Black and grey · Flash

A black and grey drawing of a tribal design built from large curving bands and spirals. The bands are filled with woven, chevron-like patterns and shaded with pencil or fine ink, with some areas left white. The design is shown on a plain white background with no body part visible.

Blackwork Tribal Spiral Swirl Pattern Design

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

You are kneeling in the wet bed by the back wall because the flax has got away from itself again, and the blades have fallen across the path like drunk soldiers. Mrs Okafor's son has posted a box of cuttings from Auckland, wrapped in newspaper that still smells of the sea, and she has put them in the ground with the ceremony of someone who expects them to fail.

Keep reading

She does not watch you dig. She sits on an upturned crate by the water butt and shells peas into her lap, telling you that the spiral on her grandmother's kete was never meant to be a picture. It was a fern that had not yet decided to open, she says, and you should respect a thing that is still making up its mind.

You work the flax leaves between your fingers the way she showed you, under, over, under, until a chevron of green starts to hold its own shape. The bands want to curl in on themselves, so you let them. By the time the light turns orange over the allotments, the row has a rhythm to it, and the last coil has turned in towards the fence as though it is listening.

She picks up the final pod, presses it open with her thumb, and says nothing for a long while. Then she tells you the cuttings will take if you stop checking on them every hour. You nod, and you do not stop.