Two hands showing matching solid black triangle tattoos in a row across one finger each, in a blackwork style on the hand.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Three black triangles across two fingers

Blackwork · Hand · Black and grey · Photo

The photograph shows two hands resting together, each with a row of three solid black triangles tattooed across the base of a finger. The triangles are filled with flat black ink and have crisp, sharp edges, with no shading or fine linework. The image is in colour, with a green wall and a yellow patterned floor behind the hands, and both hands have black glitter nail polish.

Blackwork Hand Triangle Finger Hand Zigzag

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 headrope had parted again, and Ada sat on an upturned herring crate with the mending twine between her teeth, working the old knot loose with her thumbnail. Across the quay the Lily Sayer was already lying low in the water with her hold full of ice, and Dougie Rennie was shouting at the boy who had forgotten the bait. Nobody on the fleet had slept properly since the gale.

Keep reading

My sister Morag came down the steps with two mugs of tea that tasted of tin. She sat on the next crate, close enough that our knees touched, and watched my hands. "You'll go blind at that," she said. "You'll go blind and Rennie will still have the net in the wrong order."

I had cut the first point of the zigzag into the twine the week before she left, a small wedge of tarred cord folded back on itself so the mesh would hold tight where the cod always went looking for a way out. Then I had done two more beside it, the same size, because one point on its own looks like an accident. Three is a pattern. Our father taught us that, the way he taught us to read the set of a tide from the colour of the gulls.

Morag set her mug down. "They're sailing without the cutter tomorrow," she said. "Tam's taking the Sayer out to the far bank."

I did not look up. I pulled the last knot tight, bit the end clean, and ran my finger along the three points until I felt each one catch and hold. Then I tied the net to the rail where the boats could see it from the water, and the wind came up off the firth and turned all three flags at once.