Colour neo-traditional tattoo of a teal bird resembling a peacock, with a red rose and green leaves, on an upper arm.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Peacock and rose on an upper arm

Neo-trad · Upper arm · Colour · Photo

A large teal bird with a yellow-orange wing and a crest of pink and purple plumes sits at the centre, surrounded by dark green leaves. A red rose is shown at the lower edge, and a swirling pink and orange floral motif fills the top. Bold black outlines define the shapes, with saturated colour fills and soft shading across the bird's body and the rose petals.

Neo-trad Traditional Botanical Upper arm Peacock Bird Rose Leaves Flower Floral

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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 rain has found the gap in the awning again, and it drips onto the buckets of roses you were told to have sold by noon. Your uncle counts the takings in the tin with wet fingers and says nothing, which is how you know the week has been bad.

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Then the peacock comes down Kirkgate on its own, trailing a train the colour of a kingfisher's back through the puddles. Mrs Ashdown from the fish stall shrieks that it is hers and that it is not hers, that it has been dreaming about the bins. A boy in a yellow cagoule holds out a sprout to lure it. The bird ignores him, lifts its crest of pink wire plumes, and walks straight into your bucket of carnations as if it has an appointment.

You go after it with a sack in one hand and nothing in the other. Nobody has asked you anything worth answering since the spring, and you are not about to explain yourself to a stranger's bird. It stops among the red roses and regards you sideways, the way people look at something they have decided to forgive. You do not catch it. You stand in the rain and wait, and the crowd stands with you, a dozen umbrellas tilting toward the same small patch of light.

When Mrs Ashdown finally gets her hands on the bird, it lets her, and you find you have sold the last rose for nothing to the boy in the yellow cagoule. He says it is for his mum. The peacock walks off towards the bins with its tail dragging, the rain beading on its teal like glaze on a good plate, and for once nobody is counting.