Back of a woman with a large botanical tattoo of flowers and leaves across her upper back, with a white satin sash being tied at her waist.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Floral back tattoo above a tied white dress

Botanical · Back · Mixed · Photo

The photograph shows a large floral tattoo across a woman's upper back and shoulders, with rose-like blooms and leafy stems drawn in dark outlines. The ink appears mostly dark grey and black, with some red tones in the flower petals. The woman's back fills the frame, with her long wavy hair falling over one shoulder and two pairs of hands tying a white satin sash at her waist.

Botanical Back Rose Flower Leaves Floral Hair

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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

You close the stall at half past two, when the lamps on Brindley Row start to buzz and the last van has pulled away. Your hands smell of cut stems and wet cardboard. The roses left over are the ones with bruised red edges, the petals darkening at the rim as if they had been holding their breath too long. Nobody buys those. You never have.

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Mrs Okonedo from the tailor's flat above leans out of her window to ask whether you're still open, and you tell her you've been open since Tuesday. She laughs the way she always does and drops a coin wrapped in a receipt into your palm. You pick out three roses with their leaves still on, the veins inked dark, and wrap them in the newspaper you've been saving for a week because it carries the tide times. Down by the river, someone is singing badly in a language you almost know.

The thing about old roses is that they keep their shape after they've stopped opening. You learned that from your grandfather, who drew them on the back of invoices with a fountain pen and never once coloured them in. He said the outline was the part you could trust and the red was only weather.

You walk the three roses to the bridge and lay them on the parapet, heads turned toward the water. By morning the bin men will have them, or the gulls, or the tide. You don't mind. You have already sketched the next one in your head: the same thorned stem, the same leaves gone soft at the edges, the petals reddening towards the point. This time you'll get it right.