Black and grey botanical tattoo of roses and buds with leaves on a woman's forearm near the wrist, with a gold filigree ring on her hand.

Black and grey roses on a forearm

Botanical · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

A woman rests one hand on her hip, showing a black and grey tattoo of two roses with buds and leaves running up the outer forearm near the wrist. The roses are rendered with fine cross-hatched shading and engraved-style linework, giving them a vintage botanical-print look. The plain white top and neutral wall keep the focus on the tattoo and a gold filigree ring.

Botanical Forearm Rose Rose bud Leaves Flower Botanical

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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

The engraver's plates arrived at Hebden Cross in a crate that smelled of tar and damp, and you were the only one in the shop willing to open it. Mr Pell had sent the old catalogue back to the printer in Leeds, and the copper plates came home with it, two roses cut so finely you needed a lens to count the hatching. Your father said the roses were too dark for a seed shop window. You said nothing. You had already decided to keep the one with the open bloom and the bud hanging beneath it like a closed fist.

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Through the autumn you copied them by lamplight onto card, line by line, until your wrist ached and the ink lay in grey ridges along the side of your hand. The town noticed. Mrs Ackroyd from the post office asked whether you were ill. The vicar's wife wanted a rose for the harvest festival, something that would look well in brass. You drew it for her, and she framed it, and nobody thought to ask who had cut the original.

In November the crate held one more plate, wrapped in oilcloth and unmarked, with a note in a hand you did not know. The engraver had died in Halifax, and his widow wanted the last plate returned to someone who would print it properly. You took the train over in sleet with the copper in your satchel. Her kitchen smelled of coal smoke and cloves. She turned the plate over in her palms and said the roses had always looked as if they were waiting to be picked.

You walked back over the tops with the light going. At the crossroads you stopped and looked at the drawings in your head: the open bloom, the bud, the leaves edged like tin. Then you pulled the pencil from your coat and began again from memory, on the back of the bus ticket. By the time the bus reached Hebden Cross you had drawn the rose four times, and each one was a little less like the plate and a little more like yours.