Black and grey blackwork tribal tattoo covering one side of a torso, extending across the chest, ribs and upper arm, with the other side left bare.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Tribal blackwork across chest, ribs and arm

Blackwork · Chest · Black and grey · Photo

A torso is photographed in black and white, with a large tribal design covering the right side of the image from the upper arm across the chest and down the ribs. The linework is bold, using solid black fills, white negative-space bands, circular medallions, zigzag triangles and stepped key patterns. The opposite side of the torso is left bare, creating a strong vertical split in the composition.

Blackwork Geometric Chest Ribs Upper arm Tribal Geometric pattern Zigzag Triangle Torso Sleeve

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

You are called to the village hall on the Thursday before the wedding because the east wall has to be finished by Saturday, and because Mrs Aldous will not have a brush touch it until she has seen the line. She stands in the middle of the floor with a tape measure hanging round her neck like a stole and says, "Down the centre. Not a hand's width off."

Keep reading

You mix the black in a bucket that smells of linseed. The pattern is the one from her mother's shawl: stepped keys running in bands, zigzag teeth along the lintel, two round medallions the size of dinner plates. You work from the top down, white ground first, then the black laid thick enough to look wet from the back row of chairs. Her son's family and the bride's family have not shared a table since the harvest fair, and the seating plan on the clipboard by the door has been drawn with a ruler.

By evening the wall is split. One side is dense and bold, the other bare plaster, cream and cold. Mrs Aldous walks the length of it and stops at the join. She asks whether you could put one small key on the bare side, just one, in the corner where nobody looks. You say you could. She shakes her head and says no, put it where the bride can see it from the door.

On Saturday the bride stands in that doorway with her back to the room, waiting for the music to change. Sun comes through the high windows and falls across the black half, and the white bands glow like a road going somewhere. The single key on the plain side is still tacky at the edges. Someone has already walked across the join with a damp boot, and the print runs straight down the middle of the floor, belonging to neither side.