Black and white photo of a fine line and dotwork dandelion tattoo with a long thin stem running down the centre of a bare upper back.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Dandelion tattoo on upper back

Dotwork · Back · Black and grey · Photo

A small dandelion seed head made of tiny dots and fine lines sits in the upper back, with a single thin stem running straight down the spine. The linework is delicate and the dots are built up to form the round head, with the stem drawn in one crisp line. The photograph is black and white, with soft lighting and plain background that keeps focus on the tattoo.

Dotwork Fine line Botanical Back Dandelion Seed head Stem Flower Dot

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

Right, shift up and mind the candle, because this is the one about Bess Tolley and the dandelion that wouldn't let go. You'll have blown a clock like that yourself, I shouldn't wonder, all those white heads counting out the hour on the lawn. Bess had one growing by the back gate of the Tolley farm, a fat yellow flower that opened every morning like a shop door, and she loved it more than her own boots.

Keep reading

Her brother Alf came by in the August heat with a bet from the carters: a shilling said he could blow the whole head bare in one breath. Bess stood in front of it with her arms out. "You'll not have it," she said. "Every seed on that head has a name and a road, and the roads are my business."

So she sat down in the dust and named them. One for the coal barge going down to Goole, one for the cough in Mrs Pratt's chest, one for a soldier in France whose letters had stopped coming. Each seed lifted off the moment she named it, drifting over the hedge and the rooftops, and by suppertime the head was bare but for a few grey threads. Alf slunk off without his shilling, and Bess never once looked at the stalk.

Her mother asked her why she hadn't pulled it up for the table. Bess only said the stem was the part that stayed, and somebody had to keep standing where the wishes came from. Next summer there was a new head on the same stalk, and then another. The farm changed hands twice since then, and nobody living remembers her name, but that thin green line is still standing by the gate, straight as a ruled line down a page.