Small black fine line tattoo of a single tree with stippled ground on the inner forearm, shown against a pale background.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Single tree on a forearm

Fine line · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

A small tree with a full, branching crown stands on a short stippled line of ground. The linework is fine and delicate, with the ground built from tiny dots and the canopy drawn in thin, detailed strokes. The tattoo is in black ink only and sits alone in the centre of the forearm against a plain, light background.

Fine line Dotwork Forearm Tree Branches Silhouette

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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

Sit down, sit, you're letting the flies in. No, I'll tell it my way or not at all. Forty miles past the salt pan there stood one tree, and the drivers called her the Widow, though nobody living could say who she'd lost.

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My grandfather drove a water lorry on that run, and he swore the tree moved. Not in the wind, mind. It moved the way a man shifts his weight when he's trying not to be seen. He'd stop beneath her for his dinner, and every time he looked up the branches had spread a little further over the road, as if they wanted to walk out and see what the tarmac was for. And every time he drove away, the ground under her was dusted with a few more of those tiny dots, as though something down there was breathing out.

One August a girl called Ines broke down out there with a dead alternator and nothing but a tin of boiled sweets. She sat in the shade and waited three days for a lorry. She counted the dots in the dust because it was something to do with her hands, and she talked to the tree the way you'd talk to a sulking uncle. On the third evening she finally scraped at the ground with a spanner and found the earth damp an inch down. Water, close enough to reach if you were patient and didn't mind your nails.

That's the trick of her, you see. The Widow isn't lonely. She's standing on the one thing out there that doesn't run dry. So when you're out on that road and you spot a single tree, don't you go feeling sorry for it. Drink your tea before it goes cold. There's a long way to the coast, and she's not the only thing out there keeping watch.