Black and grey fine line tattoo of a small flowering sprig with leaves and a bud on the inner upper arm, below a striped sleeve.

Fine line flower sprig on the upper arm

Fine line · Upper arm · Black and grey · Photo

A small single-needle style sprig with a thin stem, a rose-like bloom at the top, two or three leaves and a tiny bud. The linework is delicate and even, in black ink only, with no shading. The sprig sits diagonally on the inner upper arm against a plain white background, with a striped sleeve at the top right.

Fine line Botanical Upper arm Sprig Flower Rose Bud Leaves Stem

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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

Shift up, the lot of you, and keep your hands off the lamp. This is the one about Eirene and the cutting. You will say it is only a stick, and I will say it is only a stick that outlived a king.

Keep reading

When the old wall fell at Lamnos, the garden went with it. Eirene was a potter's daughter who had nothing left but her father's kiln and a sprig of wild rose that had rooted in a cracked jar by the gate. Every morning she carried the jar up the hill to the ruined temple steps, because the soldiers had taken the wells below and the rose needed water more than she did. The priests laughed at her. The tax men laughed louder.

On the morning the ships came in, she found the rose had put out a single bloom, pale as milk, with two leaves and a bud curled tight as a fist. She did not pick it. She cut one green stem with her father's knife, wrapped it in wet linen, and tucked it under her arm where the sleeve hid it from the harbour men.

They never asked what she carried. They asked her nothing at all, and that was how she got across the water. Years later, in a town she could not pronounce, a woman with flour on her hands asked Eirene what the little sprig was for. Eirene told her to plant it where the sun would find it first. Then she wiped her hands and said it was only a stick, really, which is the best sort of thing to smuggle.