Black ink dotwork drawing of a cluster of succulents and trailing string-of-pearls stems on white paper, a flash design for a botanical tattoo.

Dotwork succulent cluster drawing

Dotwork · Black and grey · Flash

The drawing shows a dense cluster of succulent rosettes, including a large central echeveria, with trailing stems of small rounded leaves at the lower left and right. The forms are outlined in bold black liner and filled with stippled dots that build shading on the leaf edges and centres. It is rendered in black ink only on white paper, photographed flat against a dark wooden surface.

Dotwork Botanical Succulent Rosette Leaves

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The glasshouse at Penhallow was still grey when Marjorie Tregear unlocked it, and the first thing you noticed was the smell of wet grit and the tick of cooling pipes. Rows of echeverias sat on the staging like a crowd that had been waiting all night, their rosettes tight and powdery, each leaf edged with a faint blush where the light had caught it.

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She had left you the cuttings tray with a note propped against it in her square capitals: TAKE THE PEARLS OUT OF THE RAIN. Strings of them hung from the hanging baskets, green beads on thin stems, and the drips from the roof had got into the soil. You knelt on the sack, tipped the pot, and worked the stems free one by one, counting under your breath because she always counted.

Outside, the sky over the cliffs went from iron to pearl. The big central rosette, the one she called the Duchess, had split a new leaf overnight, a small pale spike pushing out of the heart. Marjorie had said once that a succulent never flowers for the person who waters it, only for the person who waits. You did not believe her then. You set the cuttings in fresh grit and pressed them down with two fingers.

When the first van rattled up the lane, you stood, dusted your knees and found the old label book on the bench. Under yesterday's date you wrote: Duchess, new leaf, 6.40. Then you turned off the lamp and let the morning in.