Black and grey realism tattoo of roses and leaves wrapping the outer forearm of a person wearing black dungarees.

Black and grey roses on a forearm

Realism · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

The tattoo shows a cluster of roses in various stages of bloom, with a bud at the top and full open blooms below, joined by stems and shaded leaves. The shading is soft and smooth, with careful gradients on the petals and deeper blacks in the leaves and stem lines. The arm is shown in a three-quarter view against a dark, out-of-focus background, with the tattoo as the clear focal point.

Realism Botanical Forearm Rose Rose bud Leaves Stem Flower

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

Sit on that barrow, boy, and mind the secateurs. You want to know how a rose gets its name? Your grandad's bud came from the old Albertine on the south wall, the spring the frost came in April and killed everything else. He cut a sliver no longer than my thumbnail, bark and all, and slid it under the skin of a briar stock at Fenwick's, tied it with raffia, and didn't speak to anyone for a week.

Keep reading

Buds take their time. Nothing happens for a fortnight, then a green shoot pushes up through the tie and you think you've done it. Then the leaf edges go brown and you're certain you haven't. Your grandad sat with that bush every evening with a flask of tea gone cold, and he'd tell it the news from the village, the price of coal, who had married whom. Nobody else knew why he bothered.

Come summer the bush had three blooms open at once, each one a different age. The tight one at the top was the one he'd been waiting for, pale as a folded letter. Under it sat the great open cups, heavy as a fist, their petals rolling outward as if they were tired of being held. He shaded the leaves himself with a pencil in the margin of the seed catalogue, darker wherever the rain had pooled. I still have that catalogue.

The wall came down the winter they built the car park, and nothing grew on that ground after. But the cutting had gone to the new house in a pot, and it's the one by your back step now. So when someone asks where your rose came from, you tell them the south wall, the frost, and a man who talked to it. Go on, put the kettle on. Mind the thorns.