Black ink botanical tattoo of a small bird perched on a stem with a poppy and a rose-like bloom, drawn in fine line with dotwork shading, on the side of the torso.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Bird and poppy on a side body

Botanical · Ribs · Black and grey · Photo

The tattoo shows a small songbird perched on a thin stem, with a large open poppy, a smaller rose-like bloom, and a closed bud above it. The linework is fine and even, and the bird's body and wing are shaded with stippled dots, with a dotted arc behind the bird. The design is entirely black ink on pale skin, and the composition is a vertical spray that runs up from the branch to the poppy.

Botanical Dotwork Ribs Bird Poppy Rose Flower Bud Branch Stem 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

Nobody claims the things people leave on the 6.40 at Hexley Junction, so I keep them in the cupboard behind the ticket office and give them names. The brown umbrella with the broken spoke is Mr Pryce. The cornet part for a solo nobody will play has waited eleven months, and I call it Patience.

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The drawing turned up on a Thursday, folded in quarters inside a copy of the Radio Times left on bench four. It showed a songbird, plump as a teacake, perched on a bent stem, with a poppy lifting its papery head above and a rose-like bloom tucked beside it. A closed bud sat at the very top. The feathers were not drawn so much as pricked in, hundreds of tiny dots packed so tightly that from a yard away the wing looked grey. Behind the bird someone had traced a broken arc of dots, as if a lamp had swung through the air and left its trail.

I pinned it above the kettle and forgot it until the Saturday the 7.15 was cancelled for a signal fault. Dennis Vell came in off the platform soaked to the collar, saw the drawing, and stood dripping on the mat. He said he had watched that bird on the signal post at the end of the cutting every dawn for forty years, and that it always flew before the first train came through. He tapped the dotted arc with a damp finger and said that was where the lamp used to swing when he was a lad and the old signal box still had a man in it.

The next morning I opened the window at six. The bird was on the post, grey wing toward me, facing east. I left the window open for the rest of the shift and did not take the drawing down.