Black and grey tribal swirl tattoo across a man's upper arm and shoulder, with sections filled in red and green tartan.

Tribal swirl sleeve with tartan fill

Upper arm · Mixed · Photo

A large tribal-style swirl design covers the upper arm and shoulder, made up of bold spiral scrolls and interlocking bands. The linework is black with grey shading and fine hatched detail inside the bands, while several panels are filled with a red, green and tan tartan pattern. The photograph is taken outdoors from a side angle, with the design wrapping around the arm.

Upper arm Shoulder Spiral Swirl Tribal pattern Scroll

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

Before the boats went out on the Thursday tide, Iona Gray had to find the spare net float that had rolled under the fish-house bench. The fleet at Ardcalum had nine hulls and one dinghy nobody claimed, and the harbour smelled of diesel and wet rope. She knelt on the slipway, pulled the float free, and found beneath it the carved board her grandfather had left behind, its spirals worn smooth by generations of thumbs.

Keep reading

Her cousin Davy came down the steps with two flasks. "Your mother says you're not coming out," he said. "Says the weather's turned." Iona looked past the breakwater, where the swell lifted grey and then folded itself into long curls, the same curls her grandfather had cut into the board, one inside the next like a fern that never finished opening. Skipper Mackie had hung a red and green tartan scarf from the wheelhouse for luck, and the wind kept worrying at it.

They went out anyway, because the mackerel were in and the price was good. Halfway to the grounds the wind backed, the sea stood up in rings, and Iona found herself steering by the pattern in the water, letting each swell roll under the bow the way the carved lines turned on the board. Mackie watched her hands and said nothing, which from him was praise.

They came back at dusk with the hold full and the scarf torn to a strip. Iona hung the board on its nail and traced the innermost spiral with one finger until it stopped. Her grandfather had never explained why he carved the lines so tightly, only that a good pattern was one you could follow home in the dark. She thought he might have meant the sea as much as the wood.