Close view of a small fine line tattoo of a botanical sprig with buds and leaves on a person's upper back, near the shoulder blade.

Fine line botanical sprig on a shoulder blade

Fine line · Back · Black and grey · Photo

A small sprig of a plant with three closed buds, a open flower head and several slender leaves, drawn on a single curving stem. The linework is very thin and delicate, with light hatching in the leaves and no solid shading. The tattoo sits off-centre on a bare upper back against a soft, blurred indoor background, with a grey top along the lower edge of the frame.

Fine line Botanical Back Sprig Bud Leaves Stem Flower Branch Plant

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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

Nobody in Harrow Court could say who first dropped the seed in the drainpipe, only that by spring a green thread was coming out of it at the ninth floor. Old Mrs Adeyemi on the fourth said it was a sign the building was tired of being grey. Her grandson said it was a weed. The caretaker, Mr Pryce, said he would clear it on Friday, and on Friday he didn't.

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By June the stem had found the balcony rail and climbed it, three closed buds hanging from its side like folded letters. The children from the ground floor came up in a line to look. They said the top bud had a face, and when the wind came off the estate the whole sprig turned towards the river. Nobody argued with them.

The council man came in August with a clipboard and a ladder. He stood under the sprig for a long time, then asked who had been watering it. Everyone said no one. He wrote something down and went away, and the next week a letter arrived saying the block was due for demolition before winter, and that residents would be rehoused across the water.

On the last evening, Mrs Adeyemi cut one bud with her kitchen scissors and set it in a jam jar on the lift lobby windowsill, where the strip light buzzed. She said a thing that had grown up through concrete should be allowed to stay wherever it had got to. The flower opened in the night, and by morning the lift had stopped at every floor, which is how Mr Pryce knew to leave the rest of it alone.