Black and grey rose tattoo covering the forearm of a seated person wearing a gold bracelet and a cream knitted jumper.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Black and grey roses on a forearm

Botanical · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

A cluster of three roses runs along the forearm, with detailed petals and leaves rendered in black and grey. The shading builds soft tonal gradients across the petals, with darker areas where the flowers overlap. The arm rests on a bare knee against a cream knitted fabric and a beige carpet, with the face not shown.

Botanical Realism Forearm Rose Flower Leaves

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

Dear Marguerite,

Keep reading

The roses at the back wall came in all at once this year, as if they'd been waiting for you to leave before they bothered. Mr Haddon from number nine says the blackspot is the worst he's seen since the war, and I told him that's what comes of planting Albertine against a north wall. He didn't laugh. He never does when I'm being clever, which is most of the time now that there's nobody to be clever at.

I went through the shed this morning looking for the secateurs and found your tin of seed packets, the ones with your handwriting gone soft at the edges. Three of them are for a rose called Tuscany Superb, which you swore would bloom in the shade and which, as you'd have pointed out, never did. I've planted them anyway, in the bed by the gate, where the light comes slantwise after four.

The cuttings you took off the old climber are rooting in jam jars on the windowsill. Six of them have pushed out little red tongues of leaf. I keep thinking I should tell you, and then I remember there's a postbox at the end of the lane, and I can post this instead, and pretend the stamp is a kind of pruning.

I've kept the largest bloom from the first flush and dried it between the pages of the almanac, so when you come home you can see the colour has gone the grey of wet slate, and tell me it still looks like the photograph.

Your loving husband, Edwin

P.S. The blackspot is in the wall now, not the roses. I'll deal with it.