Black and grey botanical tattoo of a large peony, smaller blossoms and berry sprigs across the upper arm and shoulder.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Black and grey floral piece on upper arm

Botanical · Upper arm · Black and grey · Photo

A large peony bloom sits at the centre of this design, supported by smaller five-petalled flowers, berry sprigs and leaves that climb up towards the shoulder. The linework is fine and the petals and leaves are built up with soft grey shading and dark accents for depth. The piece is entirely black and grey and fills the upper arm, with the wearer in a striped bikini top.

Botanical Realism Upper arm Shoulder Peony Flower Blossom Berry Leaves Branches Floral

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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

Shake that umbrella out before you come under my awning, love, or you'll have the whole stall dripping. There, sit on the crate. The rain's set in for the afternoon and I've nothing to sell but my talking, so you may as well have the lot. My father kept a barrow on this same cobbled corner when the glass roof over Hollin Market still had all its panes. He grew peonies in the yard behind the Dyers' Arms, great heavy-headed things that nobody else in the city could coax to open so wide.

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One March a stranger came up the lane with a paper parcel buttoned inside his coat and asked for a cutting from the bloom at the heart of that bed. My father said no. The stranger said the frost would only finish off whatever he didn't take, so he may as well have it. Then he stood in the downpour, neither sheltering nor speaking, until my father tired of watching him and handed over the knife just to be rid of him.

The stranger wrapped the cutting in wet newspaper with a sprig of hedgerow blackberries and a bunch of wild blossom off the canal path, then walked off without a word of thanks. The peony came up true the following June. My father swore the stranger had pushed the berries and blossom into the bed himself at dawn, though nobody saw him do it, and the leaves climbed the yard wall dark as slate, reaching for the sill.

That's the bloom you can still see in the back window of the Dyers' Arms, if you can find the window through the steam. When it rains like this, the petals hold the water in their middle like a cup. My father used to say that was the stranger's thanks, sitting there in the heart of the flower, waiting for someone to notice.