Black and grey rose tattoo with shaded petals and leaves on the inner wrist of a hand with turquoise nails, in a traditional style.

Black and grey rose on the inner wrist

Traditional · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

A large rose in full bloom is tattooed on the inner wrist, with its stem and several shaded leaves curling outwards around the head. The petals are rendered with bold outlines and soft grey shading that builds depth toward the centre. The photo is taken from above on a brick pavement, and the tattoo is the only colour-neutral focal point against the pale skin.

Traditional Botanical Forearm Rose Leaves Stem

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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

Mind the step, that plank's gone soft, and keep your hands off the tiller while I talk, it sulks. Right then. You'll want the one about the rose that grew out of the Hollin Cut lock gate, the one the lock-keepers could never scrape off.

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Nell Corrie came up the canal in the spring of 1889 on the narrowboat Patience, towing slate and a husband who never learned to swim. The lock at Hollin was kept by a man called Thomas Ayre, who had a rule painted on his hut door: no gates opened after dark for a boat without a lamp. Nell had no lamp. She had a tin of lamp-black and a steady thumb, and she told him she'd light her own when the night was ready for her.

That was the week the rose came up through the oak. Pale at the rim, dark as wet coal at the heart, its leaves curling outwards as if reaching for the boat. Thomas took a chisel to it and each cut bled grey dust that wouldn't wash off his hands. Nell sat on the coping and rubbed the petals darker with her thumb while he swore at her, and the thing crept up the gate a hand's width every night.

Thomas went to his grave with a grey smudge on his wrist he swore came from that gate, and the lock still opens for anyone with a lamp lit. Nell's boat is moored below the weir even now, or so the lads tell me, though I've never once seen her light. Pass me that kettle, would you. The water's gone cold while I've been talking.