Colour tattoo of blue scrolls, green leaves and a red peony on the forearm, in a neo-traditional style.

Blue scrolls and red peony on a forearm

Neo-trad · Forearm · Colour · Photo

A colour tattoo on the forearm shows blue scrolls with curled ends, a large red peony-like flower with shaded petals, and green leaves. Thin black linework outlines the curls and a small yellow bud sits among the swirls, with the blue scrolls framing the flower. The palette is bright and saturated against a plain pale skin background and an orange surface.

Neo-trad Botanical Forearm Scroll Flower Peony Leaves Swirl Bud

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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

Sit down, sit down, the fiddler is only tuning and will not start before the lamps are lit. You want to hear about Sigrid Dahl and the painted chest? Then listen, because I will not tell it twice to a room full of people who keep glancing at the door.

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Sigrid was the painter in the valley above the lake. Every bride wanted her chest decorated, and every chest she painted went the same way: blue scrolls first, curling like the wake behind a rowing boat, then a red peony in the middle, as red as a winter cheek. The men said her roses were too bold for a church. The women said she painted them so bold because she had no intention of ever being bold herself. But that is gossip, and gossip is a poor thing to carry home.

The autumn Anders Lie came down from the high pasture to ask for a chest for his sister, Sigrid said yes before he had finished his sentence. She painted through the first frosts. Her hand shook on the last petal, so she laid one more layer of shadow over it to hide the tremor. When the chest was delivered, the sister lifted the lid and found, tucked beneath the blue scrolls, a yellow bud no bigger than a thumbnail, and beneath that a note in Sigrid's cramped hand: whoever opens this may follow where the scrolls point.

Where did the scrolls point? Out of the door, down the road, and straight to the lake, where Anders was waiting in a boat with the oars already dipping. Sigrid had gone too. Nobody in this valley ever found her, only the chest, which still sits in this hall, and if you lift the lid you will see the bud is painted a little larger than it was. Now the fiddler is ready. Go on, get up and dance.