Black tribal blackwork tattoo with a central sun motif wrapping the calf and ankle of a leg against a dark background.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Tribal calf and ankle tattoo

Blackwork · Calf · Black and grey · Photo

A bare leg, photographed from the side against a black background, shows a bold black tribal-style tattoo covering the calf and running down over the ankle onto the top of the foot. The design uses solid black fill and heavy linework, with a central circular sun-like motif surrounded by zigzag bands, scrolling curves and triangular points. The black ink contrasts strongly with the skin, and the pattern follows the shape of the leg.

Blackwork Geometric Calf Ankle Tribal Sun Mandala Zigzag Scrollwork Geometric pattern Band

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

The reunion was held in the old assembly hall at Trewidden Comprehensive, where the parquet still carried faint lines of a netball court. Ruth Kennack had not been asked to bring anything, but she arrived with a paddle under one arm and stood it against the trophy cabinet as if it were a coat stand. Its blade was painted black, with a sun cut into the wood, a ring of rays spiralling out from a hub, and bands of zigzags running down the shaft.

Keep reading

"What's that when it's at home?" asked Gerald Oddie, who had once sat behind her in Latin and still held his pint like a clipboard. Ruth told him her uncle had bought it from a stallholder at Falmouth harbour in 1979, a man who swore his grandmother had cut the pattern with a shark's tooth. "Dad said it was a sun for getting home by," she said. "The zigzags are the tide. You follow the tide, and the sun tells you which way is north."

Gerald laughed, but Ruth remembered the afternoon they had bunked off to sit on the sea wall and watch the boats come in, her uncle's thumb moving over the carving as he named each line. Somebody dimmed the lights for the slideshow, and the paddle stood in the dark with its rays catching the glow from the projector. Gerald went quiet and asked whether she had ever taken it out on the water. She said no. She had only ever used it to point, and she pointed now, past the crowd, to the fire door where the car park lamp was already shining through.