Colour botanical tattoo of pink magnolia blooms and green leaves across a woman's upper back and right shoulder blade, shown from behind.

Magnolia flowers across a upper back

Botanical · Shoulder · Colour · Photo

The tattoo shows several pink magnolia blossoms with pale petal tips, buds and dark green leaves with teal highlights, spread diagonally from the shoulder blade down towards the centre of the back. The petals are rendered with soft, smooth shading and fine detail in the stamens and veins, giving a painterly, realistic finish. Pinks, reds and greens dominate on bare skin against a plain, light background.

Botanical Realism Shoulder Back Magnolia Flower Blossom Leaf Bud

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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

Dear Nell, the tree has finally done it. Mr Haswell's magnolia on the chapel wall, the one he swore would never flower in a yard full of coal dust, has opened six blossoms since Tuesday. They are pale at the tips and deeper pink towards the heart, as if someone had dipped each petal in wine and then thought better of it. I stood at the gate this morning with the washing going grey on the line and could not get on with anything.

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You will remember I took a slip from it in March, wrapped in wet sacking, and rode the bus to Easington with it jabbing my hip the whole way. Everyone said it would die in this dust. I kept it in the back kitchen and watered it from the kettle once it had cooled. Mr Haswell only shook his head and said cuttings are like children, they take if you stop fussing.

I planted it by the back step at number fourteen, in the bit of ground where the rhubarb never came up. The first bloom went in the night, a single petal lying on the flags by morning like a spill of milk. I was cross about it until Dad came up the street at shift change, black to the eyebrows, lamp still clipped to his cap. He stopped at the gate, reached over and touched one of the petals with his thumb, very carefully, the way you would test a pan.

He left a grey print on the pink. I waited for him to wipe it off and he did not. He just looked at it, then at me, and said, 'Well, that's something to come home to.' I have not had the heart to brush it away either, so it stays. Come and see it at Whitsun, and bring your good coat, because the whole street is out with their cameras.