Black and grey floral sleeve tattoo covering the upper arm and shoulder of a shirtless man seen from behind in a gym.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Floral sleeve on a shirtless man seen from behind

Japanese · Upper arm · Black and grey · Photo

A shirtless man stands with his back to the camera in a gym, wearing earphones, with his muscular back and shoulders in view. A large tattoo covers his right upper arm and shoulder, showing flowers and foliage drawn with bold outlines and grey shading. The background is softly out of focus, with gym equipment and a wall-mounted screen, and the tattoo is the main point of interest.

Japanese Upper arm Shoulder Floral Foliage Sleeve

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 snow has sealed the pass since Tuesday, and the innkeeper's daughter has stopped apologising for the draughts. You sit by the kitchen range with a sheet of rice paper held flat by two tea cups, copying the chrysanthemum the printer in Kyoto sent you before the roads closed. Its petals are drawn in fine black lines, then washed in grey so they seem to fold away from the candle.

Keep reading

Outside, the drift has reached the second window. In the back room a carter is singing badly, a debt of cards he must pay off in verses until the thaw. You keep your brush moving. Your master taught you to leave a gap in every outline so the flower can breathe. Most apprentices fill those gaps with ink out of fear. You learned to fear the opposite.

On the fourth night the carter stops singing and comes to the kitchen with frost in his beard. He studies the sheet, then you, and asks why the peony has no shadow on its left side. You tell him the light in this room comes from the stove, not the sky, and that a flower only needs shadow where it means to turn away. He laughs, louder than you expect, and says his mother kept a bed of peonies that the whole village tried to buy.

The next morning the sheet is dry and the roof gives way in one long sigh, sliding a white shelf of snow onto the lane. You roll the painting carefully and tie it with red thread. Somewhere below, a horse stamps, and you are already packing your brushes.