Black and grey forearm sleeve with a shaded peony, scrolling wave motifs and a geometric lattice band near the wrist, worn on the forearm.

Black and grey peony sleeve on a forearm

Japanese · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

A shaded peony sits in the lower half of the forearm, surrounded by fine ornamental linework including scrolling waves and stylised flame-like shapes above it. A geometric lattice band runs down towards the wrist, and the outlines are bold and even. The piece is entirely in black and grey ink against plain skin and a pale wall.

Japanese Geometric Forearm Peony Flower Wave Scroll Lattice Ornament Sleeve

Find an artist for this

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

Shift your feet off that step and sit where the lattice throws its shadow, for this is a tale that wants shade. You asked how the peony came to the wall of the Harrowgate kitchen garden, and I will tell you, though my mother told it differently and she was never wrong about a flower. Old Tobias Quill planted a single root the spring his wife went down to the coast and did not come back up the hill.

Keep reading

The sea came in that autumn higher than anyone had seen, and it climbed the wall in long curling waves, white at the lip, and the spray set the iron roses shivering on the gate. Tobias sat among his bulbs each evening and talked to the peony as if it were a neighbour. He told it about the tide tables, the fishermen's debts, the gull that stole his pipe. The bloom opened only once a year, in the dark of the moon, and it was grey then, grey as the slate roof, though the old women swore it blushed whenever the lattice creaked.

On the last night of the month a storm tore the trellis from its posts and carried the whole pattern of it down the lane, diamonds of wood rolling after the wind like dice. Tobias went after them with a lantern and found, at the bottom of the lane, the sea gone quiet and flat as a plate. The peony was standing in the middle of the road with its roots bare and dripping, and nobody has ever dug it back in.

So when you look at that sleeve, with the waves running one way and the lattice running the other, you are looking at a garden that has been moved to the sea, and a sea that has agreed to keep still. Mind the gravel going out. The gate sticks.