Black ink tribal sleeve in Polynesian-style patterns covering the shoulder and upper arm of a man wearing a black vest top.

Tribal sleeve over shoulder and upper arm

Blackwork · Shoulder · Black and grey · Photo

A large black ink tribal design covers the shoulder and upper arm, built from bold bands, solid curves, triangles and zigzag lines. The linework is crisp and the areas of solid black are dense, with fine detail in the inner panels. The composition wraps around the arm, and the design is cropped at the shoulder and at the lower edge of the frame.

Blackwork Shoulder Upper arm Tribal pattern Polynesian Sleeve Triangle Zigzag Band Curve

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

My dearest Lio, the rain has finally left the reef and the canoes are back on the sand, so you may stop writing to me about the storm. I am sending this with Teuia, who sails for Marama on the morning tide and will not wait for me to finish a sentence.

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Your grandfather's bands are finished, or as finished as Fetu would allow. He drew them on the board the way the sea draws lines on the shingle, one wave over another, each stopping where the next begins. He would not let me touch the comb. He said the zigzags were the teeth of the reef keeping the lagoon honest, the triangles were the sails of the fleet that never came home, and a sleeve must carry both or it carries nothing. I did not understand him until the chief's son stood at the feast with his shoulder dark with curves that ran down toward the elbow like a current pulling toward open water.

The ink took three moons. Fetu's hands shook by the end, so the inner panels are mine, the small diamonds packed tight as the scales on a parrotfish. He laughed when he saw them and said I had been counting the fish in the lagoon instead of the waves. The solid black at the crest of the shoulder he kept for himself, and I think he was right to.

I have left a space at the bottom of the last band, where the pattern runs off the edge of the skin and carries on into the air. Fetu always said a design should never quite finish. Come home before the next season's wind and fill it with whatever you have learnt on the water, and tell me whether the reef still keeps you honest.