Black and grey traditional rose tattoo with hatched and stippled shading wrapping around an arm, with leaves and a bud at the top.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Blackwork roses wrapping an arm

Traditional · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

Three roses sit in a cluster, with the largest in the centre and smaller blooms and leaves wrapping around the limb. The linework is bold and dark, with fine hatching and stippling creating shadow and volume in the petals. The tattoo is entirely black and grey against warm skin, with a dark, blurred background that keeps the focus on the design.

Traditional Botanical Forearm Rose Leaves Foliage Bud

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

Pull the cushion closer and mind the fire, for this is a tale that wants a cold night and a slow voice. In the walled garden at Samarkand there lived an old gardener called Bakhtiyar, and behind his house grew three roses that he would not let any hand pluck.

Keep reading

The largest sat in the centre of the bed, its petals folded over one another like the layers of good dough, dark at the edges where the sun never reached. The two smaller blooms climbed the wall on either side and wound their stems about the stones, and their leaves were so green they looked black at dusk. Bakhtiyar named them for his sons, who had gone east with the caravans and not yet come home. Each morning he drew water from the well with a rope worn thin as a hair and fed the roots one cup at a time, so the earth would not be startled.

A merchant from the coast came one autumn with a purse heavy enough to buy the house. He wanted the great rose, he said, for the wife of a governor who collected wonders. Bakhtiyar only shook his head and poured him tea. The merchant came back the next day, and the day after, until at last he reached over the wall in the dusk and snapped a bud from the eldest's stem. By morning the bud had shrivelled in his palm, and the bush beside it had dropped every leaf onto the path, as though it were listening for footsteps.

The merchant left before dawn with his purse and his shame. Bakhtiyar swept the leaves into a neat pile and said nothing. Next spring the great rose opened wider than any bloom in the city, and the two small ones climbed to the top of the wall to watch the road. Two of the sons came home that year. The third sent a letter with a caravan driver, who stopped at the gate, touched his heart, and rode on.