Black and grey realism tattoo sleeve of roses and daisies running from the upper arm down the forearm to the wrist.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Black and grey rose and floral sleeve on an arm

Realism · Upper arm · Black and grey · Photo

A woman in a black top shows a full arm sleeve of black and grey flowers. Large realistic roses with shaded petals and leaves cover the upper arm and elbow, while daisy-like blooms and foliage continue across the forearm towards the wrist. The shading is smooth and soft-edged, with strong contrast in the darker petals and a light grey background wash, and the image is taken against a plain patterned wall.

Realism Botanical Upper arm Forearm Rose Flower Daisy Leaves 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

Sit yourself down on the bench and mind the wet, and I'll tell you about Tobias Wren and the walled garden at Hallowfield, where the roses were grown for their smell and not for the show. He took a fever the winter he was nine, and when it lifted the colour had gone out of everything. The grass was ash. The brick was soot. Only the shapes of things were left to him, and the shadows they threw.

Keep reading

The head gardener, a woman called Mrs Adair who kept her gloves on indoors, took him on anyway. She set him to pruning the old Albertines along the south wall and taught him that a rose opens from the outside in, the way a fist unclenches. He learnt to tell a tight bud from a blown one by the weight of its shadow. By the third summer he was cutting for the house without a single mistake, and the family said the boy saw things the rest of them walked past.

The turn came in August, when daisies came up in the gravel path where nobody had sown them. Mrs Adair said it was the wind. Tobias said it was the light, which had started returning to him in pale edges, like a tide going out. He knelt and drew them in the dust with a stick, petal by petal, rubbing each with his thumb until the white ones turned to smoke.

When the grey lifted at last, he never painted another rose in colour. He said the roses had always been dark underneath, and a man could only trust what was dark. Put your hand here, see, where the petals fold back on themselves. That is where a rose keeps its secrets. Plant your daisies where the wind can find them, and don't ask me why.