Black and white photo of a forearm with three thin black parallel lines tattooed around it, forming a simple armband effect.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Three thin black bands around a forearm

Fine line · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

A forearm is shown from the side against a dark background, with three thin, solid black lines encircling it at evenly spaced intervals. The lines are crisp and uniform in weight, with no shading or fill. The monochrome photograph has soft lighting that falls off toward the top edge, which keeps the focus on the bands.

Fine line Geometric Forearm Line Band Stripe Armband

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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

Sit down, you, before the tide takes the bench. Aye, that one with the cracked seat. My uncle Tom had this from his father, who had it from a man who swore he was there, so mind it's a fine story and not necessarily a true one.

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Back in the hungry winter, when the Brightwater fleet went out of Scarhaven with nine boats and came back with six, the harbourmaster kept a length of tarred cord on a nail by his door. Every boat that failed to return got one knot tied in it. By February he had three knots and he never took them down. Folk said he tied them for the men, but he tied them for the sea, so the sea would know it had been counted.

The youngest deckhand, Eddie Marr, a lad with more nerve than sense, asked the old man for a bit of that cord to bind his wrist for luck. The harbourmaster gave him three turns of it instead, round the arm just above the bone, and pulled each one tight without a word. Eddie went out on the Good Intent with that cord on him, and came back, which the cord was supposed to mean but never did for anyone else.

Here's the turn, mind. Eddie never took it off. The tarred cord rotted away in time, but the marks it left stayed, three dark bands that never faded. When he was old and sat where you're sitting, he'd roll up his sleeve and say, there's the count, and nobody in the harbour ever asked whose names they were.