Full back tattoo in colour showing roses, a tree, a frog playing a banjo, a pocket watch and stacked books on a bare back.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Large back piece with roses, tree and banjo frog

Neo-trad · Back · Mixed · Photo

A large back piece covers most of the skin visible in the frame, with roses and leaves at the top, a tree trunk running down the centre and a green frog figure playing a banjo near the lower left. A pocket watch, a stack of books and a few smaller motifs sit lower down, and the image is mostly warm yellows, oranges and browns with green foliage. The linework is bold and outlined, with shading mainly in the leaves and the tree bark.

Neo-trad Back Rose Tree Frog Pocket watch Book Leaves Scroll

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

Gerald the frog kept his banjo in a sack under the lilypads, where the damp could not warp the neck. Every evening when the rooks flew home over Thornmere, he hauled it out and played three notes for the oak that leaned over the millpond. The oak had been his neighbour for forty summers and had never once complained about the racket.

Keep reading

One October a bookseller called Amos Pell came up the lane with a cart full of brass-cornered books and a pocket watch that had stopped at a quarter past four. He saw the frog on the bank and laughed. 'Play me a tune that keeps the leaves on that tree till Christmas,' he said, 'and the watch is yours. I've carried it since my father died and it has never once told the right time.' Gerald thought about it. He had no wish to own a watch, but he did not want the oak stripped bare before the roses in the hedge had finished blooming.

So he played. He played the slow tune his mother had hummed, the one with the dropped note in the middle, and the tree listened the way old trees do, without any hurry. When the last chord rang out over the water, a single yellow leaf stayed fixed to the top branch, and the watch in Amos's palm began to tick, loud and steady, as if it had only been waiting for someone to ask.

Amos wound it, looked at the hour, and pressed it back into the frog's hands. 'Keep the tune,' he said, 'I'll take the books and the road.' Gerald tucked the watch into the sack beside the banjo, and every evening after that he listened to it tick against the strings, counting out the days before the last leaf let go.