Neo-traditional sleeve tattoo of red roses, green leaves and grey acanthus scrollwork covering the upper arm and shoulder of a shirtless man.

Acanthus and rose sleeve on upper arm

Neo-trad · Upper arm · Mixed · Photo

The tattoo covers the upper arm and shoulder with grey acanthus scrollwork, with two red roses and dark green leaves set among the foliage. The scrolls are shaded in soft greys with bold dark outlines, giving the design depth and volume. The arm is shown across the chest against a plain pale wall, with the design running down towards the elbow.

Neo-trad Botanical Upper arm Shoulder Forearm Rose Acanthus Leaves Scrollwork Foliage

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The mason came up the hill road the week the frost broke, a canvas roll of chisels over one shoulder and a drawing of a leaf that curled back on itself like a fern. Mother Aude watched him from the lych gate. The church of Saint Morel had waited forty years for someone to finish its capitals, and the parish had stopped expecting a man who could carve a leaf that looked like it was breathing.

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He worked through spring with the door propped open to the smell of wet lime. Acanthus, he called it, a plant from warm countries that the old masons had copied in stone until no one remembered the sun. He cut each scroll deep so the shadow sat in the hollows like water. The children brought him bread and asked why the leaves never stopped turning over. He said the stone wanted to climb, and that was the whole trick of it.

By midsummer the scrolls had reached the sill of the east window, and the lowest leaves leaned toward the churchyard wall where Gaspard the miller grew roses the colour of cut plums. His wife Hélène carried them into church each Sunday, and the mason stopped mid-cut every time she passed, chisel raised in the air, until the sexton remarked on it.

When the last capital was done, the mason took his wages and went down the river on an eel boat before the bishop could see it. The bishop found two roses carved in the stone above the altar, their petals painted with madder, and beneath them a leaf with a thumbprint pressed into the lime. Every June after, the wall roses came out on the stone too, and the parish left the east window open for the scent.