A coloured traditional-style tattoo sleeve on an upper arm, with blue roses and a banner reading LOVE HATE, while a man in a burgundy suit holds the arm.

Blue rose and banner sleeve on upper arm

Traditional · Upper arm · Colour · Photo

The tattoo covers the upper arm and includes blue roses, grey foliage and a banner with the words LOVE HATE, all outlined in bold black lines. The shading is soft and grey within the blue and purple background areas. The arm is shown in a close crop against a lace dress and a stone wall, with a man's hand resting on the arm.

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The blue dye was the first thing to go wrong. Nell had boiled elderberry and iron filings for a month to get the colour the Aske family wanted for their gate, a blue so deep it looked wet, and when she carried the pot down the lane the whole village came out to watch. Everyone knew the Askes and the Harrows had not spoken since the mill burned.

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Tobias met her at the gate with his sleeves rolled to the elbow, and he laughed at the pot. "You'll not get a rose out of that," he said. "Roses want to be lied to." Nell told him to hold his tongue and dip the brush. They painted the gatepost together in the long gold light, and when the banner came back from old Mr Pym's workshop, lettered on a strip of elm, it read LOVE on one edge and HATE on the other, because Tobias had insisted it be fair.

Through the autumn the blue roses climbed the wall of the wood behind the yard, roses nobody had planted, their grey leaves spreading like ash over the stone. The families argued at the well and the shop and the chapel steps. Nell kept her pot warm every evening, and Tobias kept coming down the lane with a question he never quite asked.

On the first hard frost he finally asked it, and she answered by taking the banner down and hanging it the other way round, so the lane read the word they had been painting all along. Above them the roses held their colour under the frost, as blue as the dye had promised.

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