Back of a woman's shoulder with a realistic colour tattoo of orange flowers and grey shaded scrollwork, placed on the upper back near the shoulder blade.

Orange flowers and scrollwork on a shoulder

Realism · Shoulder · Mixed · Photo

The tattoo shows three large orange flowers with dark centres, resembling sunflowers or gerberas, arranged along the shoulder and upper back. Grey shaded scrollwork and swirling stems link the blooms and extend upward toward the neck. The petals use soft orange shading and fine detail, while the scrolls are rendered in smooth grey tones, giving depth against the skin.

Realism Botanical Shoulder Back Sunflower Flower Daisy Scrollwork Swirl Stem

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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

The gate's hung true at last, though Mr Pascoe still swears the hinge side sits a hair low. I told him iron has to settle the way a field does after rain, slow and then all at once, and he looked at me as if I'd recited scripture at him over the anvil.

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The scrolls took me three weeks at the forge on Carr Lane. Grey iron, cooled in the trough, then a wire brush to bring up the shadow in each curl so they look like smoke that has agreed to stay put. Your mother would have laughed at me, fussing over the underside of a leaf nobody will see from the road.

The flowers are what the children came to see. Ada calls them sunflowers, though the seedsman's catalogue insists they're gerberas. She painted the three heads in orange lead on the conservatory glass, turned toward the one window that gets sun after four o'clock, dark centres and petals fanned out as if they mean to catch the last of the light before it goes.

I didn't tell Pascoe, but I left a gap at the top of the gate, the width of a thumb, where the scroll doesn't quite meet its twin. Ada says it's for the swallows. I think it's for the sun to find its way through when everything else is shut. Come up at Michaelmas and see for yourself, and bring the good chisels, the ones you never give back.

Dad