Black and grey botanical tattoo of a fern frond inside a circular frame on a forearm, with shaded linework.

Fern leaf in a circle on a forearm

Botanical · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

A fern frond fills a circular frame on the outer forearm of a person wearing a dark sleeve. The tattoo uses bold outlines with shading that builds up the leaflets, and a fine stippled texture appears within the circle. The image is in black and grey, with a shallow focus that blurs the background wood and fabric.

Botanical Forearm Fern Frond Leaf Circle

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

Mind the step, it's greasy, always is down here. Now where was I. Ah, the fern. Old Teodor the bosun had it done in Gdansk, same week we lost the mizzen in the Bay, and he swore the lad with the needles was a wizard who'd rather talk about his grandmother's pickled herring than the ink. Teodor wanted a fern because his mother kept one in a tin pot by the stove in a flat above a bakery, and every morning she'd brush the fronds with the back of a spoon for luck. He never explained the circle. You don't ask a bosun twice.

Keep reading

That voyage the galley stove smoked like a bad conscience, and I was up to my elbows in potatoes when the second mate came down white as lard. The weather had turned and a crate had shifted in the hold. Teodor went down the ladder without his oilskin, and I wedged the hatch with a sack of flour so the sea wouldn't come in after him. Forty minutes, I counted by the sausages I was burning. Then his hand came over the rail, scraped raw, holding a coil of wet line like it was a loaf he'd stolen.

He sat where you're sitting and rolled his sleeve up for me, though I'd seen the tattoo a hundred times. Ran his thumb round the circle as if it were a clock he was winding. Said the fern was for the pot in the flat, and the circle was for the hatch, and that a man ought to carry both things he's frightened to lose. Then he asked for tea with too much sugar, which tells you everything about a man who has just been brave.