Black and grey botanical tattoo of three blossoms and leaves on a forearm, shaded with soft grey washes.

Grey floral cluster on the inner forearm

Botanical · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

A cluster of three flowers with dark centres and several leaves sits on the forearm, with one bloom extending toward the wrist. The petals are rendered with soft, blended grey shading and fine dark outlines, giving a painterly, slightly faded look. The design is set against plain skin on a dark grey surface, with the tattoo filling the centre of the frame.

Botanical Forearm Flower Blossom Leaf Bouquet Petal

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Margaret had kept the sketchbook under the bread bin for eleven years, the one place Dennis never looked, since he had not opened a cupboard he didn't need in forty years of marriage. The book was swollen with damp at the spine. Inside, the watercolours had faded to the colour of pencil dust, three flowers bunched on a page, their centres dark as if someone had pressed a thumb into wet ink.

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"You'll want the good paper for those," said the girl at the framers on Mill Street, turning the page with one fingernail. "Grey washes always fade in a sunny window. Did you keep it in one?"

"No," Margaret said. "I kept it for the colour."

She had painted them the summer her sister went to Canada, sitting on the back step with a jam jar of water going cloudy. Ivy had wanted blue asters, but there were none in Harrow Lane, so Margaret made do with what grew over the wall: a rambling pale rose, a stubborn white anemone, and a bloom she never managed to name. Every leaf had been dropped in with a single dark stroke, quick, as if she were afraid of being caught at it.

The girl slid the page between two sheets of acid-free card and asked what she wanted done. Margaret looked at the washed-out petals and the small dark centres still holding firm, and said only: put the colour back in the middle and leave the rest as it is. Outside, rain had started on Mill Street. She tucked the parcel under her arm and walked home the long way, past the wall where the roses were just coming out, as pale as they had been that summer.