Fine line black tattoo of stacked circles, loops and small dots running vertically down a forearm.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Vertical line of circles and loops on a forearm

Fine line · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

A slim vertical design of interlocking circles, loops, dots and short crossing strokes runs the length of a forearm. The linework is thin and uniform in black ink, with no shading or fill. The tattoo fills the centre of a plain, well-lit photo, with a tiled floor and a dark chair in the background.

Fine line Geometric Forearm Circle Loop Dot Abstract Vertical line Cross Ornament

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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

Maud makes you hold the lead line while the tide turns over the bar, the wet hemp running through your fingers like something alive. Every fathom has its mark, a loop of red wool, a leather tag, a dot of tallow pressed into the strands, and she taught you to read them by feel before you could read them by lamp. Tonight the light at Skerry Point has gone dark again, and three boats are still out.

Keep reading

Her father's chart is pinned under a stone on the chandlery counter, drawn in brown ink with every sounding ringed in small circles, some closed, some looping back on themselves where the bottom shelves away. Maud says a man can lose a boat in a mark that is one loop off. She sends you down the quay with the old brass lead in a sack and a lantern that smells of paraffin, and you count the iron rungs of the ladder as you go, one, two, the cross-bar, three.

Out past the breakwater the water is flat and black and the line goes straight down. You feel the lead strike, then the slack, then the tug as the bottom gives back a fine grey silt. Four fathoms. You call it out in the voice she gave you, and from the dark a second voice answers, thin and steady, calling a depth that matches yours to the foot. Someone else out there has been reading the same marks.

When the boats come in at dawn, Maud doesn't look at the catch. She runs her thumb over the knots in your line, stops at the dot of tallow you had forgotten was there, and nods once. Keep the chart, she says. Anyone can find deep water. The trick is knowing where the shallow starts.