Black and grey traditional tattoo of two roses with leaves, buds and a stem running down the inner forearm.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Black and grey roses on a forearm

Traditional · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

The tattoo shows two open roses, one higher on the arm and one lower, joined by leaves, small buds and a stem that runs down the forearm. Bold black outlines define the petals and foliage, with stippled dot shading and solid black fills giving the leaves depth. The design is entirely in black and grey ink against pale skin, with a brick wall and grey fabric sleeve in the background.

Traditional Botanical Forearm Rose Leaves Bud Stem Flower Foliage

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 rain had found the gap in the awning again, and Vera Pollock moved the buckets one at a time away from the drip, the way she had every Thursday for twenty-two years. Carnations, chrysanthemums, the cheap yellow daffodils nobody wanted until March. At the back, under a sheet of plastic, sat the two dark red roses she had bought from Harcourt's wholesale van that morning, already open, their petals heavy with water.

Keep reading

Nobody came for roses in the rain. By four the market had thinned to the coffee van and the man who sold phone cases from a suitcase. Jon Ebbsworth from the fishmonger's ducked under the awning with his hood up and asked whether she had anything for his mother, who had not been well and liked something with a bit of weight to it. Vera lifted the two roses out, shook the water from them, and wrapped them in brown paper with the stems trimmed clean. She left the leaves on. The leaves were the handsome part.

He paid in coins and counted them twice. "She'll say they're too showy," he said. "She says that every time."

Vera told him that was how you knew a rose was doing its job. After he had gone she stood looking at the bare bucket, then at the thorns she had stripped from the stems, lying on the wet slabs like small grey nails.

She packed up slowly, the arcade lamps buzzing on above her. She left the stripped stems in the gutter for the sweeper and carried the empty buckets home upright, rain running down their handles, the way you carry something you expect to need again.