Black and grey fine line tattoo of a pair of antlers with small flowers at the base, on a forearm.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Antlers with flowers on a forearm

Fine line · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

A pair of antlers curves upwards in a symmetrical arc, with small blossoms and leaves gathered at the centre base. The thin, delicate linework is in black ink, with light shading along the antler edges. The tattoo sits against plain pale skin, with a dark background and soft natural light framing the arm.

Fine line Botanical Forearm Antler Flower Blossom Leaves

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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

You learn the locks before you learn the towns. Calder Lock groans when the paddles go up, and the gate beams sweat in November, so you learn to lean your whole weight on the balance beam and not mind the cold water slopping over your boots. Your father steers the Marigold from the stern with one hand, the other holding a roll-up he never lights, and he tells you the towpath belonged to deer once, before the canal cut the valley in two.

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The stag comes in March. You are twelve and the hawthorn along the cut is blowing white, petals drifting onto the cabin roof and into the coal scuttle. He stands on the far bank with his head low, his antlers spreading like the branches of a tree that has decided to walk. Your father says he is only passing through. You watch him every morning, counting the tines the way you count locks, and you start leaving the heel of your bread on the lock beam for him.

One morning the bank is bare. Where he stood there is a pair of antlers lying in the nettles, pale and perfect, with a little cluster of blossom tucked into the crook of them, though nobody on this stretch of water would admit to putting it there. You carry them back along the towpath under your arm, and your father looks at them for a long time before he reaches for the spare tin of blue paint and says the Marigold needs a name that won't sink.

You hang the antlers on the bow rail, where the blossom keeps falling. By June the petals have dried to brown and curled at the edges, and you let them stay.