Black fine line tattoo of two botanical sprigs with small flower buds and a dotted arc, on the inner forearm near the wrist.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Fine line sprig and dotted arc on the forearm

Fine line · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

The tattoo shows two thin stems with small open flowers or buds, crossing over a pair of dotted concentric arcs. The linework is fine and even, with the dots spaced evenly to suggest shading. The design is in black ink only and sits centrally on the inner forearm against a wooden surface.

Fine line Botanical Dotwork Forearm Sprig Flower Bud Branch 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

Sit down, the lot of you, and mind the cat. No, the other cat. My grandmother's grandmother walked out of the salt marsh with two cuttings from the last living blackthorn tucked inside her coat, because the orchard at home had gone to canker and the parish clerk swore nothing would grow there again. She was called Maud Penhallow, and she was not a woman anyone argued with twice.

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The road to the hill towns ran over the moor, and the moor had no roads of its own. Every night she walked, the moon drew a ring around her, and the ring was made of little pale dots, the way frost settles on a gate in the morning. Maud said it was a fence put up by somebody kinder than the weather. As long as she kept inside it, the cuttings would keep their green. She talked to them the whole way, though the stems never once answered her.

At the ford the river was up and the first cutting had gone limp and brown at the tip. Maud knelt in the cold mud and thought about it for a long time. Then she gave the living bud to a boy who was sheltering under the bridge with his mother, and she kept the stem that still had sap in it. The bridge boy planted his piece by the ferry house. Maud planted hers at the foot of the chapel wall, and that is the bush you can still see from the lane, leaning out over the stones.

So when the moon goes round in its dotted ring, the hill folk leave the lane gate open. They say it is for travellers. My mother always said it was for Maud, who came back that way once and found that both bushes had grown out towards each other across the road, and had been waiting for her.