Black and grey humpback whale tattoo with roses and leaves on the side of the ribs, drawn in fine etched linework with stippled dots.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Humpback whale with roses on the ribs

Botanical · Ribs · Black and grey · Photo

A large humpback whale swims across the side of the torso, with its tail curling up toward the top left and its pectoral fin sweeping down below. Roses, peonies and leaves wrap around the whale's body and fill the gaps around it. The tattoo uses fine, engraved-style linework and stippled dots for texture, all in black and grey ink against pale skin.

Botanical Dotwork Ribs Whale Rose Peony Flower Leaves Tail Fin

Find an artist for this

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

Day 212 out of Hull, and the barometer has given up pretending. Mr Okonedo swears the whale has been following us since the Azores, a humpback, wide as our foremast, keeping a half-mile off the port bow like a dog that has decided it owns the boat. The men have stopped crossing themselves at the sight of it and started leaving it scraps of salt pork on the rail, which I have not forbidden, because I have also seen the look on the cook's face when he does it.

Keep reading

This morning it came in close enough that I could read the barnacles on its flank, and a ring of pale dots across its back like someone had flicked ink from a brush. Okonedo says that is where the old whalers used to count the years a beast had lived. I told him whalers counted profit. He told me the whale knew the difference. I have no answer to a man who talks like that on a Tuesday.

The rose bushes in the Rotherham garden were in bloom when we sailed. My daughter Ada pressed three petals into the back of my logbook and told me to bring the whale home so she could see it. I have written that down, though I cannot think how I am to fulfil it. Perhaps the whale will simply go on ahead of us, as it has been doing, and lead us back to the harbour mouth, which is more than the charts have managed.

We raise the coast in the morning. I have ordered the lamps trimmed and the log closed for the night, and still I find myself at the rail with the lantern, watching the water part where the great tail rises and falls, slow as a clock nobody has wound in years.