Black and grey realism tattoo of a blossom branch with shaded petals running down a person's upper back below the neck.

Black and grey blossom branch across upper back

Realism · Back · Black and grey · Photo

The tattoo shows a branch of blossom with several open flowers and buds, rising from the lower back towards the neck. The petals and stems are rendered with soft shading and highlights in grey and black, giving a three-dimensional effect. The design is centred on the back, with plain skin around it and the top of the head and hair visible at the top edge of the frame.

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The blossom had been Maren's idea and nobody in the family had understood it. Her grandmother's pear tree had come down in the storm of 1987, and the wood was still stacked behind the shed in Halsey Lane, grey and split, when Maren's sister finally asked why a branch had to be on her back. Maren said she wanted something that would bloom without needing rain. Her sister laughed and then didn't.

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The studio on Ferrier Road smelled of green soap and hot machine oil. The artist worked from a photograph of a branch Maren had cut herself, pale flowers opening in a cold week, and drew it in pencil before any ink went near her skin. He kept asking about the buds. Maren told him the buds were the important part, the ones that hadn't decided yet. He nodded as if that were a normal thing for a customer to say, and went back to shading the petals so they looked lit from one side.

When the wrap came off, she asked her sister to hold up the hand mirror. The flowers ran from her lower back up towards her neck, grey on grey, and the topmost ones were so faint they looked like breath on glass. Her sister said it looked like frost had settled on something alive. Maren thought that was close enough. She paid, tipped the artist too much, and walked home along the canal with her collar pulled up, where the first real frost of the year was already silvering the railings.

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