Black and grey realism tattoo of roses, leaves and thorny stems with a skull on the upper back, near the shoulder blade.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Black and grey roses and skull on upper back

Realism · Back · Black and grey · Photo

The tattoo shows several roses in full bloom, with leaves and thorny stems wrapping around a skull that sits in the centre of the design. The shading is smooth and detailed, with soft greys and dark blacks giving the petals and leaves depth and volume. The design fills the upper back, with the roses framing the skull and the subject's shoulder cropped at the edge of the frame.

Realism Botanical Back Rose Skull Leaves Thorn Stem Flower

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Sit down, the lot of you, and mind the sawdust. No, Dolly, that chair with the bent leg is spoken for, it's been waiting for your mother since 1931. Right. Carrow Pier Ballroom, a Saturday in the summer the war ended, and the band was playing 'Begin the Beguine' for the fourth time because nobody had told them the request was finished.

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Walter Penhale played the double bass and kept a skull in his instrument case. Nobody knew whose skull. He said a surgeon in Ramsgate had given it him for a debt, and he'd never say more. Every Saturday he set it on the bass drum where the dancers could see it grinning, and every Saturday Ruth Haskell came up the stairs with a fresh red rose pinned at her collar, because she'd been promised the last dance and meant to collect it.

That night she didn't dance. She stood at the rail with the rose in her fingers, pulling off the petals one at a time and letting them drift down onto the floor, where the couples turned them into a dark mess under their shoes. Walter watched her from the stage. The skull watched too, if you believe the younger ones, and I've never been able to tell them they're wrong.

When the lights went down for the last waltz, there was only the stem left in her hand, thorns and all. The boards were thick with crushed petals by morning, and the cleaner swore they'd gone the colour of old wine. Walter never played that bass again. They say the skull still sits in the case, and on warm nights a rose comes up through the floor, one at a time. Now, who's getting me a sherry?