Black ornamental floral tattoo across the back of a hand and fingers, in a botanical style, with dark painted nails and silver rings.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Black floral swirl design across hand and fingers

Botanical · Hand · Black and grey · Photo

A hand with dark nail polish and silver rings on two fingers shows a black ornamental design of scrolls, leaves and flowing floral forms. The design runs over the back of the hand and along the fingers, with the bold, solid lines of the flourishes set against pale skin. The plain, light background keeps the focus on the pattern, and the design appears to be black ink or henna.

Botanical Hand Floral Swirl Scroll Leaves Flourish Finger Ring

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 Nell,

Keep reading

The wind has finally dropped, so I can hold the pen without it skating across the page. Mr Pascoe came into the workshop yesterday with the last of the drawings for the chapel screen, and he wanted the vine pattern to run the wrong way round, climbing down rather than up, as though the leaves were trying to get back into the sea. I told him the wood would not take it. He said wood takes whatever a steady hand gives it, then looked at mine and said nothing more.

I have been practising on the backs of old chart paper. You know how the nib wants to make a flourish fat at the start and thin at the end, like a breath let out slowly? I cannot get the curl to close. Every scroll I draw either stops short or runs on past where it should, spilling into the margin like a dropped skein. Father would have laughed and taken the pen from me, then drawn one curl so easily I would have thrown the ink pot at him.

On Thursday the boats came in heavy with pilchards, and the gulls went mad over the quay. I stood at the window with a leaf of tracing paper in my hand and watched a lad from the Carrick boat unload his crates, his sleeves rolled and his fingers stained dark from some tar job. I thought of that screen. Maybe the curl does not need to close. Maybe it only needs to look as if it might keep going, the way a tide does when it is turning and nobody has told it to.

I am going to try the whole thing again tomorrow, this time with the nib held lighter. If it works, I will bring you a proof, and you can tell me honestly whether it looks like a vine or a wave.

Love, Maud