Black ink tattoo of stacked concentric circles and dots running down the forearm, in a geometric linework style.

Stacked circles tattoo on forearm

Geometric · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

A vertical column of overlapping circles, each containing concentric rings, arcs and small dots, resembles Gallifreyan-style script. The design is drawn in clean black linework with some heavier outlines and fine interior detail. It sits on a pale forearm against a dark background, with the tattoo filling most of the frame.

Geometric Forearm Circle Concentric circle Dot Arc Linework

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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

The frost has got into the top field gate again, and you are the one who has to chip it free before the ewes come down. Your uncle's hands were always quicker at this. He left you the farm and a shoebox of paper, and it is the paper that keeps you up at night: sheets covered in circles, each one with smaller rings tucked inside it like nesting bowls, and dots scattered at the edges like seed.

Keep reading

Nobody on the valley road can read them. Mrs Pryce from the shop thought they were a seed catalogue. The vet said they looked like a map of the drains. But on the third night, with the stove ticking and the lamp turned low, you notice the dots are not random. Each ring holds one, two, or three, and the arcs crossing them open and close the way a gate does. You copy the first column onto the back of a feed invoice, then the second, and by the time the kettle has boiled dry a third time you have a rough count of every lamb born on the farm in the last eleven years, with a name beside each count.

The last column is the stacked one, five circles running down the page like a chain of lanterns. The bottom circle has only one dot, and it sits exactly where a pen would rest if someone were about to write a word and then stopped. You sit with that for a long time. Outside, the ewes shift against the wall and the frost creeps over the gate you never finished clearing.

In the morning you take the pencil and draw one more ring under the others, a plain circle with nothing inside it, and you leave a dot in its centre for whoever comes next.