Pencil drawing of a tribal and knotwork emblem design with a central diamond motif, shown as a tattoo design on plain paper with no body part visible.

Tribal knotwork emblem tattoo design

Black and grey · Flash

A pencil drawing of an emblem with a teardrop-shaped outline, interlaced knotwork bands and two curving spiked tails. A diamond-shaped motif sits at the centre of the emblem. The lines are shaded with graphite in soft greys, with darker areas giving the bands depth, on a plain white background.

Emblem Knotwork Diamond Spike Tribal Interlace

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 bronze cracked twice in the mould, and Ilse Farrow was done listening to the foundry boy tell her the knot could not be cast. Outside, the wind was pushing grey water up the slipway of Skerrow, and the third pour had to go in before the tide turned the lane to mud. She fed the crucible herself, watching the metal take the colour of a wet pebble.

Keep reading

The emblem had been her grandmother's, sketched on the back of a tide table: a teardrop of looping bands, each strand going over and under the next so no end could be found, and two long tails curling down like spray off a bow. In the centre sat a diamond of nested rings that narrowed to a single point. Her grandmother had said the diamond was the harbour light and the bands were the people who kept coming back to it. Ilse had never been sure that was meant as comfort.

When the mould split open at dawn, the left tail had come out with a spike broken short, and the boy went quiet. She took the file from his hand and started on the other tail to match it. Then she stopped, turned the piece in the grey light, and saw that the broken spike sat exactly where the bronze had run fastest, where the sea had been pushing hardest. She put the file down and left it.

That afternoon she nailed the emblem above the boathouse door, where the lamp would catch the bands. The storm came in at dusk and the tails took every gust. Nobody on the island asked why it had been left unfinished, and by the next spring the fishermen were touching it as they passed, the way you touch a thing that has held.