Black and grey shaded rose with leaves and a thorned stem, tattooed on the back of a hand, in a botanical style.

Hanging rose on the back of a hand

Botanical · Hand · Black and grey · Photo

A small rose hangs head down from a thin thorned stem with three or four leaves on the back of a hand. The bloom and leaves are rendered in black and grey with fine linework and soft stippled shading that gives them volume. The subject is centred on a plain light grey background, with a silver bracelet on the wrist and rings on the fingers.

Botanical Dotwork Hand Rose Stem Leaves Thorn Hand

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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 last tent comes down on a wet Tuesday behind the bus depot in Scarrow, and you are the only one left who knows how the knots go. Mr Aldous ran off with the takings two winters back, the strongman drank himself into a caravan in Skegness, and the clowns sold their greasepaint to a panto troupe that never paid. So it falls to you to unpick the guy ropes while the rain turns the sawdust to porridge under your boots.

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Mother's rose act is still bolted to the centre pole. She used to hang from it by her knees, a silk stem wound tight round the wire and a painted bloom fixed to the end, head down, so the front row could swear it was growing out of the dark. Nobody remembered the trick was hers until you were the one who had to climb up and cut it loose.

The bloom comes down in your hands heavier than you expect, the wire sharp beneath a crust of old paint. You fold the canvas over it, leaves first, the way she taught you, and the thorns catch in the stitching. Out past the depot a lorry grinds its gears towards you, and you have until the last rope is slack to decide whether you ride out with the tent or leave the rose where the crowd last saw it.

You leave it. In the morning the depot man finds it still turning on its wire above the empty ring, petals dark with rain, the stem pointing at the sawdust as if the whole show had simply been hung upside down to dry.