Black and grey tattoo of a man's head filled with flowers, wheat and an eye, with a checked collar and bow tie, on an upper arm.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Man's face filled with flowers on upper arm

Traditional · Upper arm · Black and grey · Photo

A man's head in profile-style portrait is set within a collar and bow tie, with his face filled by large flowers, leaves, wheat stalks and an open eye. The linework is bold and engraved-looking, with stippled dotwork shading on the cheek and neck. The design is entirely black and grey and wraps across the upper arm, filling the frame.

Traditional Dotwork Upper arm Man Head Face Flower Eye Wheat Leaves Collar Bow tie Portrait

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dad sold seed from a narrow shop on Mill Lane for forty years, and by the end nobody in Haddley could picture his face without something growing over it. He'd stand behind the counter in his checked waistcoat and his spotted bow tie, telling customers which wheat would stand up to an August downpour, and they'd nod at the flowers on his cheeks as if they were a sort of spectacles.

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The eye came from a seed catalogue, the old kind that cost a shilling and smelled of damp. He pinned it above the door to watch the weather, he said, and later moved it to the window beside the sweet peas. Mrs Abney swore it followed her to the till. Dad only laughed and said a good grower always keeps one eye on the sky and one on the soil, and that was the whole trick of the trade.

When his hands started to shake, I took over the ordering. In March I found him out on the allotment, sitting cross-legged between the rows of wheat with his collar buttoned up and his bow tie straight. He wouldn't come in. The seed had to go in the ground that day, he said, or it would sulk for a year. I knelt beside him and pressed the last packet into his palm, the way he'd taught me to do with a stubborn customer.

We sowed it together, slowly, while the blossom came down around us like a kind of applause. When the light went, I walked home with the empty trowel and left him there, his face quite full now, watching the sky.