Black tribal tattoo with a central turtle motif wrapping the upper arm and shoulder in a Polynesian-style blackwork design.

Polynesian turtle tribal on upper arm

Blackwork · Upper arm · Black and grey · Photo

A bold tribal design covers the upper arm and shoulder, centred on a turtle with a geometric triangular shell pattern. Solid black fills contrast with fine line work and repeated zigzag and leaf-like motifs in the surrounding bands. Only black ink is used, and the skin is photographed against a dark background.

Blackwork Upper arm Shoulder Turtle Tribal pattern Geometric shape Zigzag Leaves Band Shell

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

Out past the last fish trap at Vaelu, where the reef drops into water the colour of slate, the old women said the sea turtle Tahe kept count of the boats. Ruma's father had not come home from the north passage the winter the wind turned. She went down to the shingle at first light with a coil of cord and a gourd of water, and she sat there until the tide reached her knees.

Keep reading

The turtle came up beside her, its shell domed and crusted with pale barnacles, its eye patient and unhurried. It did not speak. It turned its head towards the deep water and then back to her, and she understood that it wanted her to climb on. She tied the cord round her wrist and held the ridge of the shell. The plates were marked with triangles set point to point, like the spread of a flying fish, and she traced them with her thumb to keep count the way her mother had taught her to count nets. Sixty-one. Sixty-two. The days since the boat had left.

They came to a low sandbank as the sun went down. There a small hull lay on its side, its timbers grey and split. Her father sat beneath a sheet of sailcloth with a broken oar across his knees. He was thin, and his lips were cracked, but he lifted his hand when he saw her, the way he did when she came up the path from the reef with a full basket.

They bailed the boat with coconut shells while the turtle waited, and then it took the three of them slowly through the dark, the water hissing along its back. By moonrise the lamps of Vaelu showed on the shore. The turtle slid away without a splash. Her father asked who had brought them in. Ruma said only that the sea had counted them and found them short, so it had sent a little more. The next morning she went back to the shingle with a bowl of rice and set it on the sand for the one who keeps the count.