Black and grey botanical tattoo of lilies with ink splatter details across a person's upper back.

Grey lilies and ink splatters across a back

Botanical · Back · Black and grey · Photo

The tattoo shows several large open flowers, likely lilies or magnolias, with soft blended shading that gives the petals depth. Dark ink drips and splatters run down from the blooms and along thin stems, adding a loose, painterly contrast. The design covers much of the upper and middle back, with the flowers at the top and the stems and splatters sweeping down towards the lower back.

Botanical Realism Back Lily Magnolia Flower Stem Ink splatter Petal

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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

Listen, and mind the fire, for this is the tale of the Ink Queen's gardener, who was called Tobiah Marr and who had hands that shook only when he was sober. In the kingdom of Vellmoor, where the river Sallow runs grey under the bridges, the Queen wanted a garden that would not wilt in winter. So she sent for every painter in the realm, and every one of them painted her lilies that stood up straight and proud, and every one was dead by the first frost.

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Tobiah took the commission last, when the others had gone home to their dinners. He did not paint the lilies at all. He took a pot of soot and a bundle of rushes, and he went down to the river at dusk, where the water had gone black with the day's smoke. He dipped the rushes and flung them at the stone wall of the palace, and the ink burst where it struck, and ran in long thin lines down the masonry like rain on a window. Then he breathed on the ink and the lilies came up out of it, grey as the dawn, their petals open wide as cupped hands, shaded soft so the light seemed to sit inside them.

The Queen came down at midnight in her nightdress to shout at him, and stopped dead in front of the wall. Her own face was reflected in the black splashes at the stalks, and the lilies were turning slowly toward her, as if they had been waiting all their lives to be looked at. She did not shout. She knelt in the wet mud and put her palm flat against the stone, and the ink came off on her hand, warm as a living thing.

They say the wall is still there, though the palace has long since fallen down around it. On a clear night, if you stand by the Sallow with your back to the water, you can see the lilies bloom on the stone, and the black drips still running down, looking for the river they came from.