Colour botanical tattoo on a thigh showing pansies, an orange tiger lily, a blue bell-shaped flower, buds and green leaves in a traditional style.

Pansies, lily and blue bloom on a thigh

Botanical · Thigh · Colour · Photo

A colour tattoo of pansies, an orange tiger lily and a larger pale blue bell-shaped flower, with closed buds and green leaves arranged in two loose sprays that wind down the outer thigh. The linework is bold and dark, with soft blended shading on the petals and leaves, giving them a gently three-dimensional look. The sprays follow the curve of the leg, with the lily and pansies in warm yellow, orange and purple against the green foliage.

Botanical Traditional Thigh Flower Lily Pansy Bud Leaves Blue flower

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Nell was on her knees on the cabin roof with a fine brush when the lock keeper came along the towpath carrying a kettle he had no intention of using. "You've got the purple wrong," he said. "Pansies have a face. Give them a face."

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She had been hired to paint the roses for Amos Tully, who had lost his wife in the spring and wanted the cabin dressed the way she used to dress it. Nell knew roses and castles, the old painted patterns of the cut. She did not know heartsease, or the bell flowers that hung off the hedges at Thistle Bottom, or the orange lilies that grew wild by the weir. Amos sat on the lock beam and named them for her, one by one, as though reading out a roll call.

Each evening she painted what he named, and each morning the colours had lost a little of their shine, because the river wind found the wet paint and the dew got into it. She wanted to start again. Amos shook his head. "Leave the damp ones. Flowers are always going over. That's how you know they're real."

By the first frost the boat was done: pansies climbing the cabin side, a tiger lily spilling over the tiller, one pale blue bell shut tight as a fist near the bow. Amos walked the length of the towpath with his hand on the rail and stopped at that bell for a long time. Then he left the lock gate open for her that night, which was not allowed. In the morning there was a single orange petal stuck to the paint beside the lily, bright as a match head, and Nell decided to leave it where it was.