Black and grey rose with leaves and a scrolling vine tattoo on a person's thigh, with a hand pulling up grey shorts.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Black rose and vine scrolls on a thigh

Botanical · Thigh · Black and grey · Photo

A black and grey rose with shaded petals and leaves sits high on the outer thigh, with a thin scrolling vine extending down the leg below it. The linework is bold and dark, with soft grey shading inside the rose petals and leaves. The photograph is taken at close range, with the shorts being pulled up at the edge of the frame and a plain indoor background.

Botanical Thigh Rose Leaves Vine Scroll

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

Dad grew roses on the strip of allotment behind the colliery wall, because nothing else would hold its colour against the dust. He called the bush Old Sallow, after the pit, and talked to it the way other men talked to dogs. I was not allowed to pick from it. Mam said the dust got into the petals and you could taste it in the tea.

Keep reading

The bindweed came up the fence every summer regardless, its tendrils winding round the wire in tight curls that Dad said were showing off. He pulled it out at the root on Saturdays and it was back by Tuesday, sending green shoots under the gate and along the path. He never beat it. He only stopped it going where it wasn't wanted, and I think now that was the whole of his trade.

The October the roof came down at the far face, he walked out to the allotment before the phone call had finished. I found him there at dusk with the secateurs, cutting the one bloom that had opened late. He didn't say who it was for. He wrapped it in a page of the Gazette and held it out to me, the stem still wet from the rain, the vine already trailing over his boots.

Take it down to the gate, lass, before it spoils, he said. I went. When I looked back he was kneeling in the wet earth, pulling at the bindweed with both hands, and behind him it had already crept up the gatepost and begun to curl tight as a fist.