Black and white photograph of a forearm with three thin, evenly spaced black lines tattooed around it in a fine line style, with long hair falling behind.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Three parallel lines on a forearm

Fine line · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

The photograph shows a person's forearm, bent at the elbow, with three thin black lines wrapping around it in parallel. The linework is crisp and even, with no shading, and the lines are spaced evenly across the forearm. The image is monochrome, and soft light and loose hair fill the background, with the face not shown.

Fine line Geometric Forearm Band Forearm

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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 learn the crossing at Holm Lode by sound before sight. The gates come down with a groan that Uncle Alf says is the wood telling you it's tired, and you stand on the boards with your flag while the ten-fifteen from Peterborough shivers the level under your boots. Alf taught you to count the rails: three lines of steel for the up line, the down line and the goods spur, each one painted white at every sleeper so the night shift can find them in the dark.

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The night the fog came off the Nene you could not see the paint at all. You heard a lorry coming from the wrong side, grinding in low gear, and you ran out with the lamp and swung it in the three slow arcs Alf had shown you, the stop signal nobody uses because it looks like a child waving. The lorry halted with its bonnet a yard from the barrier. The driver climbed down, lit a cigarette with hands that wouldn't keep still, and asked what on earth you thought you were doing out in the wet.

Nothing, you said. Counting.

In the morning Alf had the crossing gate repainted, three white bands from top to bottom, the same width apart as the rails. When the fog rolled in again that winter, you could find the gate from the kitchen window with your eyes shut, and you never needed telling which way was home.