Black and grey realistic rose with two buds and a thin stem, tattooed behind the ear on the side of a person's neck.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Black and grey rose on the neck

Botanical · Neck · Black and grey · Photo

A black and grey rose in soft shading sits behind the ear on the side of the neck, with two closed buds and a long thin stem trailing downwards. The petals are shaded with smooth grey gradients and darker outlines, while the stem and buds use fine, delicate lines. The photograph is a side-on close crop showing the ear, neck and dark hair, with the tattoo centred on the skin.

Botanical Fine line Neck Rose Rose bud Stem Flower

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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

You arrive at the fair on the Tuesday after the frost, when the ground behind the dodgem track still holds the shape of last year's tents. Mr Oake, who runs the coconut shy, says the roses are the first things to go in damp weather, and you know he is right, because you have spent three seasons touching up the caravan panels with a sable brush and a tin of grey wash. The colour always fades before the fair leaves the town.

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Mrs Pell keeps the one rose that never fades. It is painted on the inside of the ticket booth, a black and grey bloom the size of a saucer, with two closed buds and a long stem that runs down the wood and disappears under the counter. She says she drew it at eleven, the summer her father's tent caught fire in Ipswich and she had nothing to paint with but soot and spit. Every spring she asks you to leave the stem alone, and every spring you do.

On the last night of October the wind takes the awning, and in the morning the booth stands open to the field. The wood under the counter has been scraped bare, the way you would lift loose varnish. You find Mrs Pell on a crate at the edge of the grass, watching the lorries pull out one by one. She doesn't look round when you sit beside her. She only says the rose was never the important part, the stem was there to show which way the fair would go when it left.

You walk back to the booth with your brush and a little wash of grey, and you paint the stem again, starting at the bloom and taking it down past the counter, past the scraped place, out through the open door into the wet grass where the tyre tracks lead away.