Black dotwork tattoo of a scallop shell with a stippled fan of ridges and a bold outline, on the inner forearm.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Scallop shell on a forearm

Dotwork · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

A single scallop shell is tattooed on the forearm, shown open with its ridges radiating from the hinge at the lower right. The outline is a solid black line, while the ridges are built up from fine stippled dots that fade toward the hinge. The design is in black ink only, set against smooth pale skin and a dark background.

Dotwork Forearm Scallop shell Shell Sea

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

The scallops came in on the Tuesday tide, heaped in the bottom of the Gracie Ann like wet laundry, and Nell Harrow was the one who had to sort them. Her father's hands were too bad now for the knife. She worked along the quay with a bucket between her boots, prising the shells apart, while the gulls kept pace on the wall above her, waiting for the rejects.

Keep reading

Old Jack Pellow watched from his bench outside the chandlery. He had been to Spain once, in the war years, on a ship that never got further than Lisbon, and he had come home with a pilgrim's badge he never explained. 'Count the ridges,' he said. 'Every one's a mile somebody meant to walk.' Nell laughed and told him the ridges were for the shell to grow, not for anybody's miles. He only shrugged and went back to his pipe.

That evening she counted anyway, under the lamp, with the shells laid out on newspaper. Forty-two on the first, thirty-eight on the next, and the twelfth had a crack running through its fan that no care would mend. She set it aside for herself. Her mother had kept a scallop on the mantel for every child born in the street, and the sea had never once taken one of them back.

In the morning she carried the cracked shell up to the attic room, where her brother's boots still stood by the door. Tom had walked out with a pack and a letter in April, and no word since. She set the shell on the sill with its hinge toward the harbour light, the way Jack had shown her, so the ridges fanned back toward the house. Then she went down to the quay to finish the sorting, because the tide did not wait for anyone to be ready.