Black and grey realistic rose with dark leaves on the inner forearm, shown in two photos, one resting on white bedding and one with a grey top.

Black and grey rose on inner forearm

Realism · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

A large open rose with layered petals and a centre in shaded black and grey ink, surrounded by dark leaves with fine vein detail. The linework is clean and the petals use soft grey shading for depth. The two photos show the same tattoo on the inner forearm and upper arm area against white bedding, with the second image also including a grey ribbed top.

Realism Botanical Forearm Rose Leaves Flower

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

The grafting knife was still warm from Walter's pocket when he handed it to Maud across the wall of the old orchard. August had gone soft at the edges. Wasps worked the windfalls under the Bramley trees, and the rose that climbed the south wall had finished its first flush, its open heads browning at the rims.

Keep reading

"Cut the bark in a T," he said. "Not too deep. You're not carving your name." She did as he told her. The bud from the wild stock, a plump eye no bigger than a lentil, slid under the flap of bark. Maud bound it with raffia while Walter watched the sky over the glasshouse roof, because rain would ruin a graft in a day.

The rose they were taking cuttings from had come from a cottage in Sussex that nobody had lived in since the war. Walter said the woman who planted it had shaded her petals with soft pencil so the flowers looked deeper than they were, and that a good grower could tell a rose that was tended from one that merely bloomed. Maud doubted it, but she kept the knife clean and did not argue.

By October the graft had taken. Maud pressed one open head between the pages of the seed catalogue and tucked it into her coat pocket. The leaves had gone dark as ink, and when she turned the flower to the window, its centre held a shadow so deliberate she could almost believe someone had drawn it there on purpose, for a stranger to find.