Close-up photograph of a solid black abstract tattoo with a rounded head-like form, sweeping curves and a teardrop loop on the forearm.

Solid black abstract figure on a forearm

Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

The tattoo is a solid black abstract design made of a rounded head-like shape, a sweeping curved stroke and a teardrop-shaped loop. The edges are smooth and the ink is fully saturated, with no visible shading or grey tones. It sits on the inner forearm against a casual indoor background of a wooden table, a red cloth and a nail polish bottle.

Forearm Abstract Figure Silhouette Curve Loop

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

Right, shift up and mind the bin bags, because this one is about Tomasz and the skipping rope, and it doesn't start till you've stopped fidgeting. Fourteen floors up, in Halsey House, where the lift smelled of Lynx and wet pram, there lived a boy who was given a length of blue rope by his uncle, who drove a bread van. Tomasz skipped on the deck at the back, between the washing lines, and the wind off the car park was always trying to take him.

Keep reading

One Sunday the wind won. The rope went over the rail and fell like a dropped question, past the bins and the bus shelter, all the way down. Tomasz cried the way boys cry when they are too old for it, and then he stopped, because Mrs Okafor from the ninth floor was leaning on her balcony with a cup of tea and said, "Come on, we'll go and find it."

They didn't find it, not at first. What they found was the rope lying in the grass by the garages, curled into a loop with one end flicked up like a head turning to look back. Somebody had dropped it neatly, the way a dancer drops a bow. Mrs Okafor picked it up, held it to the light and said nothing for a long time. Then she said ropes remember the shape of whoever held them last. Tomasz said that was rubbish, and she said, "Then tie it to the rail and see."

He did that evening. In the morning the loop had settled against the sky into a small bent figure, head down, carrying something heavy, the way the boy had been carrying his worry all weekend. Mrs Okafor laughed till she coughed. That's the story. Mind the lift on your way out, it's been stopping at the wrong floors since Tuesday.