Black and grey realism tattoo of orchids and cursive script wrapping over the shoulder and upper arm.

Orchids and script on an upper arm

Realism · Shoulder · Black and grey · Photo

The tattoo shows several orchid blooms, with shaded petals and a detailed centre, alongside cursive script that reads "Love" in larger letters with smaller lettering around it. The shading is soft and graduated, giving the flowers depth and a three-dimensional look against the skin. The design wraps from the shoulder down the outer upper arm, and the photograph is taken at an angle that shows the curve of the arm.

Realism Botanical Lettering Shoulder Upper arm Orchid Flower Script Lettering Love

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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

Don't look at me like that, Albert, I'm not going to tell the bit about the moth again. Sit down, the kettle's only just gone. You want the orchid man, the one who took the back room at Seacombe House the summer the pier burned. He came off the Tuesday train with one suitcase and a tin of pale pink greenhouse paste, and Mrs Gaunt did not like him at all.

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He cut one bloom from the hall vase every morning and carried it up the stairs like a candle. Mrs Gaunt said flowers taken from a house were bad luck. The orchid man said they were patient, which is what the rest of us called a fault. Every night he sat at the window writing on the backs of envelopes, and the lines were all the same: you know you're in love when you can't fall asleep for the sound of somebody breathing through a wall.

Nobody believed a word of it until the August the lodger in number four started humming the same tune in the bath. Dilys the maid fished the envelopes out of the bin and found the rest of the sentence, and the rest of it was about Mrs Gaunt.

She never said yes, and she never said no. But every morning after that, there was a single orchid on her pillow, white at the edges and pink at the throat, and she never once asked him where he'd got it. Pass me that cup, Albert. No, the chipped one. It's the only one she used.