Black outline tattoo of two roses with angular leaves on a forearm, with a line of script lettering above near the wrist.

Outline roses on a forearm

Botanical · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

Two open roses are drawn in single black outlines, one above and one overlapping below, with angular leaves around them. Shading is limited to a few lines inside the rose centres, and the ink is solid black on pale skin. A line of small serif-style lettering runs across the wrist above the roses, and the photo is taken from above the arm against grass and pavement.

Botanical Lettering Forearm Rose Leaves Lettering Quote Outline

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The fair had pitched at the end of the pier at Herne Bay, and Ada Lowe got the commission the week the big dipper came in. Mr Pascoe wanted two roses on the side panel of the booth before the Sunday crowd. He tapped the board with a nicotine-yellow finger and said, 'One line each. Never lift the pen. A rose drawn twice looks like it's sorry for itself.'

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She worked through the afternoon with the light going flat over the pebbles, gulls quarrelling over chips, the generator thudding behind the carousel. The first rose came easily, its petals folding over one another like the wrong side of a letter. The second would not sit. She kept starting it above the first, then below, and each time the line wandered at the bud and she had to scrape it away with her thumbnail and begin again.

At dusk her brother Len came round with two cups of stewed tea and a paper twist of cockles. He read the chalk note she had pinned beside the board to remind herself of the words Dad used to say: art never comes from happiness. 'He meant it kindly, I think,' Len said. Ada didn't answer. She tilted the board toward the lamp, found the first petal of the second rose, and drew it down to the stem without lifting the nib.

By the time the lamp was switched off the ink had sunk into the grain of the wood, and it looked as if the roses had always been there, waiting under the paint for someone patient enough to find them.