Two side-by-side photos of a colour marigold tattoo with bold black outlines and green leaves on a forearm.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Marigold flower tattoo in two views

Botanical · Forearm · Colour · Photo

The tattoo shows a large marigold bloom with layered orange and yellow petals, a red-orange centre and green leaves around its base. Bold black outlines define the petals, and soft shading gives the flower depth. Two photographs of the same tattoo from slightly different angles sit side by side on a dark background.

Botanical Traditional Forearm Flower Leaves Petal

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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

Dearest Nell, the marigolds you pressed into my last letter have gone the colour of weak tea, but I keep them in the tin with the spare compass, because the bosun swears a dried bloom brings a crossing home. We are four hundred miles past the Azores and the water has turned the grey of old pewter.

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Mr Ashby the purser has taken to reading aloud from the almanac each evening, and last night he spent a full hour on the sun's declination while the cook burnt the biscuits. I did not mind. There is a lantern hung at the galley door, and its light falls across the deck like marmalade poured slowly, and for once nobody was shouting about the pump.

The thing I wanted to tell you is about Joseph Tull, the able seaman with the flower inked on his forearm. He had it done in Valparaiso by a man who worked with one needle and a bottle of Indian ink, and Joseph says the orange was the only pot the fellow had that wasn't already cracked. Every morning he turns his arm to the light to look at it, the way other men check a watch. Last Tuesday the wind took his hat over the rail, and he laughed about it for a whole day.

I think I understand the flower now. It does not care whether the ship sinks or the captain is sober; it opens facing whichever way the light comes. When we raise the coast I shall pin one of the old petals to the back of your door, and you may tell me what the sea looked like from your window. Your loving sister, Ada.