Black and grey tribal tattoo covering the shoulder and upper arm, with bold chevrons, bands and a sunburst motif.

Tribal shoulder and arm sleeve in black

Geometric · Shoulder · Black and grey · Photo

A black and grey tribal tattoo covers the shoulder cap and upper arm of a shirtless man, with the head and face cropped out of frame. Bold solid black shapes are separated by white bands, chevron rows, and a sunburst motif on the shoulder, with triangle and diamond panels near the lower arm. A smaller black swirl sits lower on the torso at the bottom left of the frame.

Geometric Shoulder Upper arm Tribal pattern Sunburst Chevron Triangle Diamond Band Swirl

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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 skipper hands you the gaff before you have finished tying your boots, and says the swell has come round from the west a day early. You take it without a word. The fleet is already grey shapes beyond the breakwater at Saltcombe, their lamps going out one by one as the light comes up behind the headland.

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Brannoch Duff, who has worked these waters for thirty years, shows you how to read the sea instead of the sky. Look for the lines, he says, the rows that run the same way however the wind spins them. Where the swell folds back on itself you will find the herring. You watch for the bands of darker water, the way the ripples point towards the shoal, and by noon your hands know the shape of a haul before your eyes do.

The nets come up heavy and silver, and for a while nobody talks. When the sun breaks through, it throws a flat bright fan across the wheelhouse glass, and Brannoch stops coiling rope to look at it. He says his grandmother's people on the far islands marked the sun like that, cut into the skin so a man would always carry the morning with him. You laugh and tell him he's romancing. He doesn't argue.

Back in harbour the diamonds of the net are still printed on your palms when you walk up the slip. The gulls are quarrelling over the offcuts. You count the boats coming in behind you, one, two, three, and the last one is late, so you stand at the wall with a hand over your eyes until its bow turns the corner. Only then do you go home.