Black and grey tattoo of an armoured knight holding an axe and shield on the upper arm, with botanical flowers and leaves above it near the shoulder.

Armoured knight and flowers on upper arm

Botanical · Upper arm · Black and grey · Photo

A full-armoured knight stands front-on with a shield at his side and an axe held upright in one hand, drawn with fine hatching and stippled shading. Above and behind the figure, a cluster of flowers and leaves extends toward the shoulder in the same monochrome linework. The composition sits on the outer upper arm against a plain pale background.

Botanical Dotwork Upper arm Shoulder Armour Shield Axe Flower 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

Mind the step, that one's been loose since the Coronation, and don't you lean on the rail, it has opinions. Now sit where I can see you. The knight came up from the car park on the night the lifts stopped, and he was in no hurry about it.

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He had been carved, you understand, by a man who did not believe in bright colours. Grey as the lift shafts. An axe held upright in one fist, a shield on his far side with a face worn into it by weather, and no visor, because nobody in Greenfield Court had ever been trusted with a visor. The boys on the fourth floor swore he was a pensioner's ghost. Mrs Okafor on nine swore he was a plumber from the council. Only old Dennis knew better, because Dennis watched him stand at the bottom of the stairwell every night for a month, guarding the bin store as if the bins had ever been worth the trouble.

He never spoke, that was the trouble with him. But he carried the prams up the stairs one at a time, with his axe hooked over his shoulder like a man bringing in firewood, and when Mrs Okafor's hip gave out he took her washing down to the line himself. Then the council men came in their yellow vests with a letter saying Greenfield Court would be coming down by the spring. They stood in the car park with their clipboards and looked up, and the knight looked back at them from the bottom step. Nobody could say for certain that he moved. But the next morning there were foxgloves growing from the cracks beside his boots, purple as bruises, and Dennis swore the shield had a new scratch on it, a little crescent like a smile.

So when the cranes came, the residents went down in their dressing gowns and stood round him, and nobody had the heart to ask him to move. And that, my loves, is why these flats are still standing, and why there's a knight at the foot of the stairs with flowers growing out of his feet. Now who wants a biscuit?