Fine line black tattoo of a small plus sign between two angle brackets on the inner forearm, with the arm raised against a plain wall.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Small angle bracket symbol on a forearm

Fine line · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

A small, simple tattoo of a plus sign between two angle brackets sits on the inner forearm, roughly midway between the wrist and elbow. The linework is thin and even in dark ink, with no shading. The arm is raised against a plain cream wall, with the hand and painted nails at the top of the frame and the tattoo placed low and to the right of centre.

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 lock-keeper at Hatherleigh Cut chalked his marks in pairs, a bracket either side of whatever he meant to join, and the bargemen spent a whole winter laughing at him for it. Pearl Mabry, who steered the narrowboat Thrift for her uncle, said a boat was only ever one thing or another, and she had no patience for sums that needed holding.

Keep reading

Then the Thrift was loaded at Bristol with forty sacks of salt and a crate of bell-glass bound for a church in Devizes, and at the Caen junction the water ran two ways at once. The men argued until dusk and got nowhere. Pearl walked the towpath to the old sluice and found the keeper's chalk half rubbed off the brick, and she read it the way he would have: the east cut and the west cut held between the brackets, then the boat passed through as one thing.

She took the Thrift through on the pair of them, slow, with the salt sweating in the holds and the bell-glass wrapped in her coat. On the far side her uncle stood waiting with a lantern and asked how she had managed it. She said she had kept the two waters inside the brackets and let the middle take care of itself.

That night she licked her thumb, rubbed the last of the chalk from her palm, and drew the same mark on the inside of her own arm, where the river could not wash it off.

More like this

Black and grey fine line script tattoo reading trust on the inner wrist of a palm-up hand.
Trust script on the inner wrist
Fine line tattoo of a row of small black crosses encircling the inside of a wrist, with the hand raised against a plain brown background.
Row of small crosses around a wrist
Small fine-line black tattoo of a pair of curly braces on the inner wrist, shown with the palm facing up.
Curly braces on the inner wrist
Small solid black crescent moon tattoo on the inner wrist, shown with a raised fist and red painted nails against a plain wall.
Small crescent moon on the inner wrist
Small solid black sitting cat silhouette tattoo on the inner wrist of a hand held up against a pale wall.
Sitting cat silhouette on the wrist
Black line tattoo of a heart outline enclosing two small birds on the inside of a wrist, with the palm raised toward the camera.
Heart with two birds on a wrist
Fine line black tattoo of a small triangle above a cross shape on the inner wrist of a raised hand.
Small triangle and cross wrist tattoo
Fine-line black heartbeat trace tattoo running diagonally along the inner forearm of a hand with dark green nails, against a dark background.
Heartbeat line tattoo on a forearm
Close-up of a small, thin black fine line tattoo of a cross beside a semicolon on the inner wrist, with the palm visible above.
Small cross and semicolon on the wrist
Small black fine line lightning bolt tattoo on the inner wrist and forearm, with the hand raised against a dark background.
Small lightning bolt on the wrist
Close photograph of a small black fine ink tattoo of two dots and the number 20 on the inner wrist, shown on a pale pleated bedspread.
Small ':20' lettering on the wrist
Small black tattoo of three dots in a horizontal row on a wrist, photographed against a pale grey background.
Three small dots on a wrist

From the plentytattoo archive, uploaded by a user. Is this your work? Ask for credit or removal.