Black and grey dotwork tree inside a geometric crystal outline on a forearm, with a dotted circle and solid dots above and below.

Tree within a geometric crystal on a forearm

Dotwork · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

A full tree with a branching trunk sits inside a tall diamond outline, with a faceted crystal shape forming its base. Stippled dotwork fills the foliage and ground, while crisp geometric linework draws the diamond and crystal, with a dotted circle and two solid dots above and below. The design uses only black ink and greys on pale skin, set centrally along the forearm against a dark background.

Dotwork Geometric Botanical Forearm Tree Diamond Crystal Geometric shape Dotted circle Dot Foliage Branches

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Hush now, and mind the bees, they only sting the ones who swat. Where was I? Ah yes, the pear tree at the bottom of Hollin Lane, the one that had stood barren for forty years while the old Marrable sisters tutted over their fences.

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Nobody had dug under it since their father planted it. Then in the spring the ground heaved, the way ground does when it is hiding something, and Tom Ashby's spade rang on something hard. Not glass, mind. A crystal, grey as a winter sky and faceted like a bishop's ring, sitting in the clay with its point aimed at the sun. He pulled it out with both hands and set it on the wall, and by evening the whole lane had come to look.

The sisters were the first to speak. Put the stone back, they said, it's the root's own business. But Tom had a daughter who drew in a battered sketchbook, and she sat on the wall with a pin and pressed little black dots into the paper, one by one. She counted them out around the crystal's edge until she had a ring of them, then a dot above and a dot below, and the whole lot began to hum. I'm not making that up. Ask anyone who was there.

The tree came into leaf that June, all at once, every twig of it, and the pears came too, hard and small and sweet enough to make the sisters eat their words. Tom's daughter still keeps the crystal on her windowsill, pointed at the tree. If you hold your breath when you pass, you can see the shadow of the branches move across the glass, though the wind has been still for years.