Fine line black tattoo of a vintage bicycle with detailed spoked wheels and a soft shadow beneath, on a forearm.

Vintage bicycle on a forearm

Fine line · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

The tattoo shows a vintage bicycle in profile, with a curved frame, upright handlebars, a saddle and a chainring. The wheels are drawn with many fine spokes and the frame is outlined in thin, even black lines. Light grey shading sits under the bicycle, and the image is composed on a plain pale background with a white lace top at the left edge.

Fine line Forearm Bicycle Wheel

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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 bicycle is still chained to the railings outside the Palais when you come down the steps at half eleven, its saddle beaded with the first drizzle of the night. The chain has slipped again. You crouch on the wet pavement with your good gloves in your teeth, working the links back over the chainring while the band inside murders the last waltz, and you tell yourself the tram would have been quicker.

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Frank from the cloakroom comes out with a cigarette and watches you without offering to help, which is his way of being kind. He says the queue for tickets was longer than the Saturday before, and that the girl from the drapers with the green hat asked after you twice. You don't look up. Your fingers are black with oil, and there is a smear across your cheek that you can feel but cannot reach.

The road home runs along the canal, the spokes ticking as the wheel turns through the lamplight, and you pedal with your head down because the wind has teeth. Halfway, you stop under the old lock gate and take an envelope from your coat. Inside is a single dance card, most of the names crossed out in pencil, and one left uncrossed, written in a hand you know from the Post Office notices. You read it twice by the lamp and fold it back, and you decide nothing yet.

At the top of Mill Lane the streetlight gives out, so you lift your feet from the pedals and let the bicycle run downhill in the dark, the saddle cold and the tyres hissing on the setts, and you laugh out loud at nothing at all. Tomorrow you will ask Frank about the green hat. Tonight the chain holds.