Black and grey botanical tattoo of a leafy branch with peaches spanning a person's upper back and shoulder, shown in three photographs.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Peach branch across a back and shoulder

Botanical · Back · Black and grey · Photo

A branch with leaves and several peaches runs diagonally across the upper back and over the shoulder. The design is drawn in fine black outlines with grey shading on the leaves and fruit, and the fruit has soft tonal modelling. The three panels show the same tattoo from the back and from the side, with the shoulder in focus on the lower images.

Botanical Back Shoulder Branch Leaves Fruit

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

Dear Nell,

Keep reading

The peaches came in early this year, a full week before the frost we always brace for, and Dad stood under the tree with his hands on his hips as if it had done it to spite him. The branch that leans over the wash-house wall is bent almost to the gravel now. Every fruit on it is heavy enough to pull the leaves sideways, and the leaves have that dull silver underside that means rain is coming. I climbed onto the water butt to reach the high ones and nearly went over backwards.

We picked for three days. Mum wrapped each peach in newspaper from the drawer with Granny's recipe cards, and we stacked them in the cool of the pantry until the kitchen smelt like a sweet cough drop. One split on the Tuesday, and the wasps found it before I did. I stood in the doorway holding a tray and felt absurdly close to crying over a piece of fruit, which is probably what happens when you are the only one left at home to do the lifting.

I kept one back. It is the bruised one on the lowest bough, the one Granny called the thinking peach because it hung there so long before anyone bothered with it. I did not pick it. I sat on the wall with my back against the trunk and drew the whole branch on the back of an envelope from the electricity people, the twist of it, the way the stem goes thin where it meets the fruit. When I finished I folded it into this letter, so you will have to open it carefully. Keep it flat. The leaves are rubbed grey where my thumb kept smudging them.

Love, Bea