Black and white drawing of two open palms wrapped by a thorned vine, shown as a tattoo design with no placement on skin.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Open hands wrapped in a thorny vine

Black and grey · Flash

A black ink drawing shows two open palms facing the viewer, with fingers spread and fine lines marking the creases. A thick thorned vine coils around the wrists and hands, with bold black spikes along its length. The linework is heavy and sketchy, with grainy grey texture across the background and the hands.

Hand Palm Thorn Vine Branch

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 bramble had come over the orchard wall again by the time the frost lifted, and you stood at the gate with the shears in your coat pocket because Mrs Pell had asked twice for the lane to be cleared before the carrier came through. Your father always said thorn should never be handled in gloves. A hand that learns what it is holding, he said, will not grab the wrong thing twice. So you took off the gloves you'd brought and reached in with both palms open, lifting the long cane away from the gatepost while the spines dragged little red lines across your wrists and along the creases of your fingers.

Keep reading

The cane was thicker than you remembered, coiled round the top rail like rope round a capstan. Mrs Pell watched from her kitchen window, a cup in her hand, and when you finally came up the path with blood drying in your palms she opened the door before you knocked. She said the bramble had been there before the house, before the war, that her mother had picked its berries in the hungry winter and sold the jam to pay the rent. She said it as though she were apologising for it, and you realised she had never once asked anyone to cut it down. It had been her husband who wrote the letters, and the council who answered them.

You didn't tell her you had been sent by the council. You went back down the lane with the cane wound into a loose bundle over your shoulder and set it on the verge where the carrier's wheels would miss it. Then you stood a while with your hands held out in front of you, palms up, the way you'd hold them for rain, and watched the beads of blood go dark and slow in the cold air.