Black and grey Japanese style chrysanthemum tattoo spreading across a person's upper back and over the shoulder.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Chrysanthemums across a back and shoulder

Japanese · Back · Black and grey · Photo

Two large chrysanthemum blooms, one at the centre of the back and one higher near the shoulder, are shown with curling petals, layered leaves and long stems. The linework is bold and the petals are shaded with soft grey gradients and deep black areas for depth. The design is in black and grey ink and fills the upper back, with a partial bloom continuing over the far shoulder.

Japanese Botanical Back Shoulder Chrysanthemum Flower Leaves Stem Bud Petal

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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

The judges at Pellow Quay never looked at colour first. Old Tobias Renn would hold each chrysanthemum up to the window of the packing shed, turn it slowly by the stem, and count the curls. Nine was a fair bloom. Twelve was a prize. The year I was sixteen I carried in one with fourteen, and I was so proud I forgot to write the number on the card.

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The glasshouses sat above the harbour wall, and from the top step you could watch the fleet come in past the lighthouse, hulls the colour of wet slate. My mother sold to the boats. Every Friday the men came up the hill for flowers to take home to their wives, and they always asked for the dark ones. Those were the blooms she grew in the north house, where the light came in grey and thin. She said a flower needs shadow to show its depth, the same as a face needs one before anyone trusts it.

Tobias died in March, and in April I found his ledger under the potting bench. Every bloom he had ever judged was written in the margin, with its curl count and a small pencilled mark beside it. Beside the fourteen-curl bloom, the year I forgot the card, he had drawn a tiny circle and written one word: kept. I sat on the top step with the ledger open on my knees until the lamps came on along the quay, and then I went inside and wrote the number on the card myself.