Black and grey fine line tattoo of a hummingbird feeding from a dandelion above lily of the valley, poppy and fern stems, on the thigh.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Hummingbird and wildflowers on a thigh

Fine line · Thigh · Black and grey · Photo

A hummingbird hovers at the top of the design, its beak touching a dandelion seedhead, with a sprig of lily of the valley, a poppy seed pod and fern-like stems rising from the base. The linework is fine and delicate, with soft shading on the leaves and wings that gives the botanical elements depth. The tattoo is entirely in black and grey ink and is set against the skin of the upper thigh, with the design sweeping diagonally across the leg.

Fine line Botanical Thigh Hummingbird Dandelion Poppy Fern Flower Leaves Stem Wildflower

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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 function room above the Working Men's Club in Stalybridge smelled of carpet shampoo and warm sausage rolls, and nobody had bothered with legible name badges. I spotted Ruth Calloway by the raffle table, though she had not been Ruth Calloway for twenty years.

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We were the two who drew the embankment. Every Thursday after double biology, Mr Pelling let us out to sketch whatever grew between the sleepers: lily of the valley the council had planted by mistake, poppy heads gone brown and rattly, dandelion clocks we blew at the trains. Ruth could never keep her lines light. I could never stop adding to mine.

She had spent the last few years in Costa Rica, painting for a conservation trust, and she pulled a sketchbook from her tote bag as if it were a sandwich. Most pages were hummingbirds, wings reduced to a few quick strokes. Near the back was a page I recognised before I understood it: our embankment, the grass gone to seed, and a bird with its beak on the last dandelion clock. Underneath, in her cramped capitals, WE NEVER FINISHED THIS.

I didn't tell her I had kept my own copy, folded in a drawer in Oldham for two decades. We sat on the fire exit step with the sausage rolls going cold and drew it again on the back of a raffle ticket, lighter this time, the stems loose and unhurried. When we stood up, I pinched a seedhead from the vase by the door and tucked it into my coat. The wind from the car park took half of it before I reached the bus stop.