Black and grey botanical flash design of two roses with buds and leaves, shown on a white card against pale wood, with no body placement visible.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Black rose cluster flash design

Botanical · Black and grey · Flash

A drawing of two full-blown roses and several closed buds on slender stems, with serrated leaves arranged in a vertical cluster. The linework is fine and detailed, with dense hatching and stippled shading that gives the petals depth. The design is shown in black ink on a plain white card placed on a whitewashed wooden background.

Botanical Rose Rose bud Leaves Flower Stem

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

The rain came in sideways off the river by eleven, so I dragged the buckets under the tarpaulin and let the cardboard go soft beneath my boots. Dad used to say you could read a bad Saturday in the roses, because they bruise before anything else does. Mine were holding up. The customers were not.

Keep reading

Mr Tulley came at half past, the way he always did, with his umbrella furled and his folder buttoned inside his coat. He had been an engraver once, and he still held things at arm's length to judge them. He asked for two full-blown roses, dark ones if I had them, and a handful of closed buds on wire stems. I told him the dark ones had come in tight and sulky. He said he could wait. He always said that, and he always did.

While I wrapped the stems in newspaper, he opened his folder on my upturned crate and showed me a plate: a rose cluster in black ink, every petal crosshatched so finely it looked like smoke. His grandfather had drawn it for a seed catalogue in 1911. Tulley had spent three winters copying it with a steel nib, one petal a night, because the original had foxed and he wanted it kept. "Flowers go," he said. "Lines stay, if you're patient with them."

He paid in coppers, counting them onto my palm one at a time. Then he took a closed bud from the bunch, tucked it into the fold of his folder, and walked off under his umbrella. The rain drummed on the sheeting above me, and when I looked down the newspaper parcel had soaked through in a dark, spreading stain, the way ink does when it finds the paper and decides to stay.