Black outline rose tattoo in fine line botanical style on a woman's shoulder and upper arm, with a second rose partly visible above it.

Black line rose tattoo on a shoulder

Fine line · Shoulder · Black and grey · Photo

A woman with red hair and dark lipstick, shown from the chin down, turns towards the camera with one hand resting on a tree trunk. A large black outline rose covers her shoulder and upper arm, with a smaller rose partly visible above it, drawn with uniform single-weight lines and no shading. The image is in black and grey tones apart from the hair and lips, with a soft, out-of-focus street background.

Fine line Botanical Shoulder Upper arm Rose Flower Outline Woman Red hair

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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 lock at Thrapston has been stuck half open since the spring floods, so you tie the barge to the bollard and wait, the way your father taught you, with a flask of tea gone cold in your coat pocket. Ellis from the next boat is already on the towpath, whistling at the reeds. He says the water will drop by Thursday. You don't believe him, but you have a pencil and a sketchbook and nothing else to do with an afternoon.

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So you draw roses. Not the fussy kind printed on tins, but the open ones with too many petals, the sort that grow wild along the hedges where the barges can't reach. Your mother once told you a rose is only a spiral that has forgotten how to stop. Without lifting the pencil, you follow the edge of each petal back into the centre, folding the blank paper into shapes. Ellis leans over your shoulder and says it looks like a map of a city nobody has finished building.

On Thursday the sluice groans open and the boats drop down together, the water loud and brown beneath your keel. At Wansford you find Ellis's sister waiting on the landing with a bag of carrots and a card from a tattooist in Peterborough. She asks whether you'd still draw the roses if someone wanted them on skin, one line for every turn of the river. You say you would, if they promised never to lift the pen off the edge. She laughs and waves you off down the cut.