Fine line black ink tattoo of a slender botanical sprig with small bell-shaped flowers on the upper arm.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Fine line sprig of flowers on upper arm

Fine line · Upper arm · Black and grey · Photo

The tattoo shows a single thin stem branching into several small bell-shaped blossoms and buds, with a few narrow leaves along the stem. The linework is delicate and even, with only light shading inside the petals. It is done in black ink on pale skin, and the tapering stem is centred on the upper arm.

Fine line Botanical Upper arm Flower Sprig Stem Bud Branch Leaves

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

Rain has been coming off the awning since seven, and by eleven the gutter over stall fourteen is running like a small brown river. You have sold four bunches of wet harebells to a man who wanted them for his mother and did not ask what they cost. The rest of the stems lean in the bucket by your boot, bells hanging closed, as if they are waiting for the weather to make up its mind.

Keep reading

Your aunt Maureen always said harebells were the only flower that would grow out of a wall with nothing in it but grit. She said it while she tied them with garden twine, her fingers red and cracked, rain dripping from the peak of her cap onto the paper cones. You learned to pick a stem by its taper, thin at the top where the buds sit like unlit lamps, thicker where it meets the root ball, and never to snap a branch when you could bend it.

On the last Saturday of October a girl came to the stall with a sketchbook under her coat, asking whether she could draw the bells before they wilted. You let her. She sat on the upturned crate and drew until her pencil went blunt, then tore out the page and pressed it flat under your scale. Every blossom had been counted. Every leaf had its one small point.

Maureen would have given it to her for nothing. You charged her a pound for a single stem, wrapped it in newspaper, and watched her walk off through the rain holding it like a match she was afraid to lose.