Collage of small fine line tattoos in black ink, including stars on the forearms and fingers, a dotted arrow on the upper arm and dotwork circles on the hands.

Small dotwork stars, arrows and circles

Fine line · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

This collage of six photographs shows small, delicate tattoos on forearms, fingers, an upper arm and the backs of hands. The designs include a dotted constellation-style line, clusters of small five-point stars, a dotted arrow with a chevron head, and circles built from fine dots. The linework is thin and mostly dotted, and the ink is black or dark grey on light skin, set against plain, neutral backgrounds.

Fine line Dotwork Forearm Upper arm Hand Star Constellation Dot Arrow Circle

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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

You spot Priya Haldane by the squash urn before she spots you, which is the first thing you have got wrong since 1998. The sports hall smells of floor polish and the same orange squash, and someone has strung paper stars from the basketball hoops, though one has come loose and turns slowly above the trestle tables.

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Back then the two of you spent Thursday lunchtimes in the science block with a pair of compasses and a biro, pricking dotted circles onto each other's knuckles because Mr Oduya said compasses were the only sharp thing a girl could carry past the head of year without a fuss. You never had the nerve to finish a whole circle. Priya did the stars. Five points each, pressed in until the ink ached, a small night sky across the back of your hand that a teacher made you scrub off before registration.

She asks if you still draw. You say you do invoices now, and tenancy letters, and she laughs as though that is the funniest thing she has heard all year. She tells you she runs the planetarium in Hull, the one with the leaking dome, and that she got a dotted arrow done last spring, pointing back the way they came. She says she has been following it ever since, usually into trouble.

When you leave, the car park lights are coming on one by one over the playing fields. The paper star is still turning in the hall window behind you, and you realise you have been walking the same dotted line all evening, the one she drew across your hand a lifetime ago, and it has brought you straight back to the gate.