Watercolour-style orange flower with fine black stems and script lettering, tattooed on the ankle.

Orange flower and script on an ankle

Fine line · Ankle · Mixed · Photo

A tattoo on the ankle shows a loose orange and red flower head with soft, blended edges, set against a few thin black stems and a short line of black script lettering that is too small to read clearly. The orange areas have a watercolour-like wash, while the stems and lettering use crisp, fine black linework. The skin fills most of the frame, with a silver, reflective surface behind the leg.

Fine line Botanical Ankle Flower Stem Script Lettering

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 orange bloom came up through the frost the morning before the Ashdown wedding, and the whole of Coldharbour walked down the lane to see it, because nothing had flowered on that hill since the miller's wife was buried. It stood on a single black stem by the gate, its head the colour of a coal just breathing, the edges run soft as if someone had dragged a wet brush across the paper and let the water have its way.

Keep reading

Mabel Tanner had the thin letter in her apron pocket. It had come on the carrier's cart from the sea-town, folded twice, with a line of black script across the front that nobody could read. The ink had gone to hairlines. Old Wenna held it to the window and squinted until her eyes watered, then handed it back and said a name written that fine was meant to be spoken aloud, not read.

So Mabel took the letter to the gate and did what her grandmother had told her to do with anything that would not give up its meaning. She said the words she thought they might be, one at a time, and waited. Bride. Promise. Lantern. Nothing moved. Then she said her own name, which she had no reason to say, and the petals lifted a finger's width toward her.

She understood then that the flower was never a message for the bride. It was a door for whoever came to the gate with a true thing to say, and it would stay open until the first frost took it back. Mabel folded the letter small, set it in the jug on the sill, and filled the jug from the well. In the morning the orange had bled into the glass like weather over the sea, and the stems were as black as a pen.