Black and grey chrysanthemum tattoo with dotwork shading and geometric crystal shapes on the forearm.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Chrysanthemum with dotwork shading on forearm

Botanical · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

A large chrysanthemum bloom fills most of the frame, with a faceted crystal-like shape above it and a small feather or leaf below. The petals are drawn with fine outlines and stippled dot shading that builds depth toward the centre. The image is in black and grey on a plain grey background, with the design wrapping around a bare arm.

Botanical Dotwork Geometric Forearm Chrysanthemum Flower Petal Crystal Feather Leaf

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 officer at the desk wants to know what is in the biscuit tin, and you tell him chrysanthemum seeds, which is true. Your aunt Ilse packed them herself in tissue paper, with a grey feather from the hen house and a faceted quartz she dug from the wall above the quarry. Her instructions were simple: keep the tin under your coat, don't open it on the train, and don't let the lid rattle.

Keep reading

He opens it anyway. The strip light makes the quartz throw a little spill of colour across the steel table, and he turns it over with two fingers, then the feather, then the paper twists. You watch his face rather than the tin. He is not looking for drugs or cash. He is looking at the seeds as though he has seen them before, dark and small as gunpowder in the folds.

'My mother grew these on a balcony in Leeds,' he says at last, and closes the lid with his thumb. 'Forty years. Every September she sent the neighbours away with a bunch.' He hands the tin back and keeps the quartz. 'That one stays here. The rest is for the garden, I hope.'

Outside the rain has thinned to a fine grey mist. You sit on the wet bench and loosen the lid just enough to see the seeds, and the feather lies on top like a single petal that has come loose. You think of Ilse on her knees at the quarry edge, and of how the bloom in the tin will not look like anything for months.