Black blackwork tattoo of two silhouetted figures holding hands among branches and roots, across a person's upper arm and shoulder.

Two silhouetted figures holding hands within tree roots

Blackwork · Upper arm · Black and grey · Photo

Two solid black silhouettes of figures stand facing each other and hold hands, framed by leafy branches that rise from a network of looping roots. The design uses bold solid black fills with fine branch and leaf detail, and a faint dotted arc sits in the skin above the figures. The image is in black and grey and the tattoo fills most of the frame against a grey top and a background interior.

Blackwork Botanical Upper arm Shoulder Silhouette Holding hands Tree Branches Leaves Root

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 drain had to run under the yews, so it was my spade that went in beside them, and my hands that found the roots knotted together like fingers laced in the dark. Prior Osric always said the two trees were planted by Sister Edith and Sister Hawise the spring they were admitted as novices, and that they quarrelled over which sapling belonged on the north side of the herb bed. Nobody remembered who won. The trunks leaned towards each other until their branches met in a single arch above the well.

Keep reading

The rule forbade them to speak outside the hours, so the old women tell it that they measured their days with pebbles. Each morning one sister laid a stone on the wall between the trees, and each evening the other moved it along the arc the sun had made. A faint line of pale lichen still marks where the stones sat, and Brother Gervase insists it is the only letter either of them ever wrote.

I was told to cut the roots back to the clay and be done with it. I stopped with the blade at the place where the two trunks met underground and sat back on my heels in the wet earth. The Vespers bell began across the yard. I did not cut. I laid the spade on the grass, wiped my hands on my habit, and filled the trench around them instead, leaving the pebbles where they lay.