Black ink drawing of a pair of scales of justice with a floral and vine-entwined stem and base, shown as a tattoo design on plain paper.

Floral scales of justice design

Botanical · Black and grey · Flash

A pen drawing of a set of balance scales, with chains, pans and a central post. The post, arms and base are wrapped in flowers, leaves and rosebuds, and the base sits on a cluster of blossoms. The linework is fine and detailed, with dotted and hatched shading, in black ink on an off-white background.

Botanical Fine line Scale Flower Rose Leaves Vine Chain Blossom

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

The Hartley Brothers' fair had been pitched on the moor for three days when Mr Ambrose Vine came storming across the grass to the weighing booth, his hand clamped over his waistcoat pocket. Behind him, a dozen fairgoers trailed after like gulls behind a trawler. I kept my father's scales on the trestle table, the brass arms polished, the chains running down to two shallow pans. Mum had wound the post with paper roses the spring before she died, and the flowers had long since faded to the colour of weak tea, but nobody on the circuit had ever dared call the scales dishonest.

Keep reading

"Ring-toss Peg has my watch," he said. "Silver, with my initials. I want it weighed out of her apron."

Peg stood by the duck tank with her arms folded and a rosebud tucked behind one ear. "Weigh me if you like," she said. "I'm not carrying a watch the size of a pork pie."

I lifted the pans and said the scales only ever weighed what was put on them, so everybody would empty their pockets onto the left pan, one at a time, and we would see what the right pan had to say. Vine went first, scowling, and tipped out a handful of coins, a pencil stub and a bundle of raffle tickets. The pan dipped and held. Then, because he would not be the only one looked at, he unbuttoned his waistcoat and his coat and laid them over the pan, and the brass arm swung down hard and stayed down. Something heavy had been sewn into the lining, and the silver watch slid out of the seam and rang against the metal.

Vine went red to the collar. Peg took the rosebud from behind her ear and pinned it back into the post's garland, exactly where it had come from, and the pans levelled again without a murmur. The fairgoers drifted off to the candyfloss, and I went to oil the chains, which I always do after a dispute, because the scales have never been wrong and I want them to stay that way.