Colour Botanical and Realism tattoo on an upper arm showing orange and pink lilies, a hummingbird, a praying mantis and a bee against a turquoise watercolour-style background.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Lilies and hummingbirds on upper arm

Botanical · Upper arm · Colour · Photo

A full-colour tattoo covers the upper arm with orange and pink lilies, a hummingbird hovering beside a pink lily, and a green praying mantis resting on purple and red flowers. A small bee sits near the top edge and a dragonfly appears on the right. Shading and fine detail on the petals and birds give a realistic finish, set against a loose blue and pink wash, and the image shows the same arm from two angles side by side.

Botanical Realism Upper arm Lily Hummingbird Dragonfly Bee Flower Orchid

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

The mantis had moved into the lily bed the week the ferry stopped coming, and by the second week I had stopped pretending it was a coincidence. It sat on the purple orchid by the cistern as if it owned the place, forelegs folded like a man at prayer, turning its triangle of a head whenever I walked past with the watering can. Mrs Quayle at the shop said mantises were lucky on the islands. Her husband said they were good for nothing but eating the bees.

Keep reading

The hummingbird came at noon, always, to the pink lilies along the wall. It was so small I first took it for a bee's shadow, then a fleck of light, until it hung in front of the stamens and I could hear its wings like someone tearing silk very slowly. Grandmother had washed that wall blue years ago, a sky she mixed herself from whatever pigment the chandler had left, and the flowers grew up through it as bright as struck matches. A dragonfly red as a pillar box patrolled the gap between them, and a bee kept bumping the cistern lid as though it had lost an argument with it.

On the ninth morning the hummingbird came early and the mantis was gone from the orchid. I searched the grass and under the cistern lid and found only a single pale wing folded on the stone, the way a thing is left when something with better hunger has carried the rest away. The ferry was due at four. I did not go down to the quay. I took the trowel instead, knelt among the orange lilies and dug a hole beside the blue wall for the bulb Uncle had left me. By evening the hummingbird was back at the pink ones, working their throats as if nothing had happened, as if the island had only ever been a garden.