Black ink tattoo of a stylised figure with raised arms and a looping shape, surrounded by five outlined stars, on the forearm.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Stylised figure with stars on forearm

Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

The tattoo shows a simple stylised figure with raised arms, with a looping line forming the body and a second curved line crossing it. Five outlined stars surround the figure at different sizes. The linework is even and of medium weight, and the design is in black ink on pale skin, with a plain background and a close, straight-on framing.

Forearm Figure Star Loop Symbol Outline

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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 find the drawing on the lift wall on the fourteenth floor, done in biro by someone who pressed hard enough to dent the paint. A figure with its arms up, as if it has just won something or is about to be caught. Five stars sit around it, unevenly, the biggest nearly touching the buttons. You guess it is the work of the Okafor boy from flat 9, who draws on everything he is not supposed to touch, and you stand there with your shopping bags cutting into your fingers until the doors close.

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The lift is broken again by Thursday. The council sends a man with a clipboard who studies the figure, says nothing, and writes something down. You take the stairs instead, counting landings, and on the eleventh you find the loop again, this time chalked on the concrete beside the bin chute, the curved line crossing the body like a sash. Mrs Aziz from across the landing says the boy's grandad used to stand on the roof on clear nights and wave his arms at the sky, as though the stars were a crowd he was conducting. Nobody ever asked him what he was doing up there.

On the Saturday the boy is sitting on the top step with a tin of coloured chalk. He doesn't look up. You sit one step below him, and he passes you a yellow piece without a word. You draw a star. He draws the figure, arms high, and then, carefully, a second figure beside it with its arms up too. The stars go round them both. You don't ask who the second one is.

When the rain comes in the evening the chalk runs off the step in pale streaks, and by morning the stairwell smells of wet concrete. But you have seen it, and so has the grey window on the landing, where the light from the flats comes up through the glass and makes the marks look, for a moment, like they are still rising.