Black and grey Polynesian tribal sleeve tattoo covering the shoulder and upper arm, running down towards the forearm, shown from two angles.

Polynesian tribal sleeve on an arm

Shoulder · Black and grey · Photo

A bare-chested man's arm carries a large tribal sleeve tattoo of bold black bands, chevrons and interlocking geometric panels, with a rounded motif over the shoulder. The work uses solid black fills and fine grey shading to give the bands depth, and the pattern wraps around the upper arm and continues onto the forearm. The photograph shows the piece from two side angles against a plain indoor background, with no colour ink visible.

Shoulder Upper arm Forearm Tribal Chevron Geometric pattern Band Sleeve

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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

Your grandmother's hands never stopped moving when she told a true thing, so you learned to watch them rather than her face. That spring they were cutting chevrons into a hull plank, one row after another, because chevrons are the swell coming in under the reef, and a swell has to be measured before you trust it with your life.

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The canoe belonged to a man called Teva Ruaha, who had lost two brothers to the channel and wanted a hull that would not take a third. He brought a length of old sennit rope and asked what the bands meant. She told him the solid black panels were the deep water where the big sharks waited, the bands were the reef's teeth, and the curl at the shoulder was the whirlpool that lets go of you if you keep your paddle moving. She cut each line with a shell adze and rubbed burnt coconut soot into the grooves until they looked like night.

Teva finished the canoe in the dry season and paddled it out past the breakers. He came back with the sun behind him and no fear in his face, and when he stepped onto the sand the pattern was on his arm, shoulder to wrist, black and certain. Nobody had cut it there, and he had not gone to anyone for it. Your grandmother said the sea had only finished the work on the nearest thing that would hold still.

Then she laughed and wiped her hands on her skirt. That is the trouble with good patterns, she said. They go looking for somewhere to live.