Black and grey pencil drawing of a Polynesian-style tribal tattoo design with a sun motif, bands of triangles and zigzags, shown on a sketchbook page.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Polynesian-style tribal sleeve design

Blackwork · Black and grey · Flash

A pencil drawing of a tribal design with a circular sun-like motif at the top, flowing bands of shaded geometric blocks and a zigzag panel. The linework is bold and the shading uses hard greys and solid black fills, arranged as a long vertical band that suggests a sleeve or armband. No colour is used, and the design sits on a spiral-bound sketchbook page.

Blackwork Geometric Tribal Polynesian Sun Triangle Zigzag Chevron Band

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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 light through the boarding house window had gone the colour of weak tea by the time Mrs Pryce climbed the stairs with the second pot, and Dilys still had not turned the page. She sat cross-legged on the iron bed with the sketchbook across her knees, shading a half-moon blade until its edge went hard as slate. Every ray of the sun had to match the others. Her father had said a pattern that drifted would drown you, and she had believed him at twelve, when he still had the boat.

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"That's the one from the Grayling man," Mrs Pryce said, setting the pot on the washstand. She did not sit down. The Grayling man had left his sketch on the hall table in April, a sheet gone soft as cloth, drawn in biro by someone who had seen a lot of sea and very few sleeves. Dilys had copied it three times already. The sun was easy. The zigzag was not. It ran down the band like a tide line unsure where to break, and each tooth had to be shaded on one side only, or the whole thing looked like a saw.

"He'll be wanting ink by Friday," Mrs Pryce said. "He asked after you at breakfast." Dilys did not look up. She drew the last stepped block of the lower panel, a row rising toward the wrist, then rubbed a smudge with the heel of her hand until it became a shadow. Downstairs the kettle began its long rattle. Through the glass she could see the harbour wall, and beyond it the freighter that had brought the man in, its rust-red hull the only colour left in the afternoon.

She closed the book on the wet pencil, then opened it again, because the sun needed one more ray at the top, a short wedge to break the ring. Mrs Pryce took the cold pot away without a word. Dilys shaded the wedge black, then grey, then black again, until the paper held a small bright gap where the light came through. The page was dry before the tea was. She left it that way on purpose.