Black and grey forearm tattoo of flowers and bold tribal bands, with fine line work and shaded petals, running from the wrist towards the elbow.

Floral and tribal band on a forearm

Botanical · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

A forearm is covered in a black and grey tattoo of large flowers, possibly plumeria or similar blooms, set between bands of tribal-style patterns. The petals use fine outlines with soft grey shading, while the heavier black bands and some stippled areas give contrast. The design wraps around the arm diagonally, and the photo is taken at an angle with a wooden surface and dark fabric in the background.

Botanical Blackwork Forearm Flower Plumeria Tribal pattern Band Leaf Swirl

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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, sit down, there's room on the bench if you move your bag. The seven-forty is running late again, so you've time for the flower story, and it's the only one I still tell properly. Mind, my voice goes at the end, so you'll have to lean in.

Keep reading

Back in the years when the branch line still had a proper stationmaster, a sailor called Eli Garrow got off the Penzance train with a sack under his arm. Inside were cuttings of a tree he'd known on an island I'll never spell correctly, wrapped in wet newspaper and tied with tarred string. Ada Penhallow, who ran the ticket window and everything else besides, told him flat out that nothing green survives a Cornish winter. He said that was exactly why he'd brought them to her.

She kept them in the waiting room beside the coal stove, in jam jars along the sill, and every morning she turned them so they wouldn't lean toward the cold glass. The old signalman swore they'd be dead by Lady Day. Instead they put out thick grey limbs and little curled buds, and the buds opened the week the line was closed for good: white flowers with yellow hearts, the sort that smell like someone else's summer. Ada cut the best one and pinned it to her collar for the last train.

That last train went out with nobody aboard but a guard and a dog. When the wind lifted the blossoms off the platform and carried them down onto the rails, the guard swore they rose in a pattern, bands and curls like the carved edging on the old footbridge. Ada never said whether it was true. She only said flowers know where they're going better than we do, and the line is still there if you want to walk it. Mind the petals on the track as you go.