Black and grey floral swirl tattoo with script lettering on a person's hip and side ribs, with a star on the upper thigh.

Floral swirls and script on hip and ribs

Botanical · Ribs · Black and grey · Photo

A person lies on a white bed, showing their side, hip and upper thigh in underwear. Black floral tattoos with fine swirling stems and blossoms curve across the hip, with cursive script above on the side of the ribs and a small star on the upper thigh. The linework is fine and the shading is soft grey, with the image framed close to the body.

Botanical Lettering Fine line Ribs Thigh Flower Swirl Floral Script Star Lettering

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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

The bread had risen too fast again, and the galley of the Marguerite Lacey was too hot for anyone's patience. You stood at the steel bench with flour to your elbows when Tobias came down the companionway smelling of tar and wet wool and asked, as he always did, whether the coffee was on. You told him it was on. Coffee was the one thing you could promise a crew in the North Sea.

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He didn't reach for the mug. He unfolded a sheet of brown paper from inside his oilskin and smoothed it on the bench between the flour sacks. On it, in soft pencil, was a sprig of wild rose twisting into a curl of stem, and above it a small five-pointed star. Beneath the drawing he had printed, very carefully, the words his mother had written on the back of his last birthday card. Could you copy the lettering onto the bulkhead above his bunk, he asked, in the same looping hand?

You said yes before you had decided to. The drawing was not careful, if you were honest. The swirls ran off the edge of the paper, the blossoms were bigger than they had any right to be, and the star leaned left as if it knew where north was and disagreed with the rest of the page. You worked through the middle watch with a fine brush and black paint, while the ship rolled and the kettle ticked on its hook and the bread finally settled into its tin.

When the grey light came through the porthole, you stepped back and looked at the wall. The star was the last thing you finished. Tobias ran one finger over it, frowned, and said it was crooked. Then he said good, that was how she would have drawn it, and he took the coffee you had poured without asking him.