Solid black tree of life tattoo with swirling branches and roots enclosed in a circle on pale skin.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Tree of life in a circle

Blackwork · Black and grey · Photo

A bold black tree of life sits inside an open circle, with a full canopy of stylised leaves and curling branches on top. The roots sweep down and join the circle's lower edge, and the design is filled in solid black with no shading. The skin tone is pale and the image is evenly lit against a plain background.

Blackwork Botanical Tree Tree of life Circle Leaves Branches Root Swirl

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

Put your backs against the wall, the lot of you, and mind the coal dust on your collars. I'll tell it once and I'll tell it true, the way my mother told it to me on this same step. Above the Stoneyhurst shaft there grew an ash tree, nothing much to look at, bent over by the wind off the tip. The men said its roots went down past the workings, through every seam, and that every tub that came up the cage had been held by them. Old Jack Hebden swore he'd seen those roots shine in his lamp at the bottom of the number two level, thin as wire and black as the rest, curling round the pillars as if they were holding up the roof with their own hands.

Keep reading

When the owners shut the pit in the spring of fifty-nine, they took the winding wheel down for scrap and left the tree standing. Nell Pryce, twelve years old and with no father left to tell her otherwise, walked up the bank with a stick of chalk and drew the great wheel on the grass, a ring the wind couldn't rub out. She drew the roots running down to meet the rim, and the leaves fanning over the top as if a gale had caught them and held them still.

Her gran came up the hill at dusk and found her kneeling there. Nell told her the roots had to reach the circle, or the ground would forget where the wheel had been. Gran said nothing. She sat down beside the girl and waited until the chalk was grey in the dark.

The chalk was gone by morning, but the tree is still there. Go up on a still night and you can hear the wheel turning underneath it, slow as breathing.