Black and grey botanical sleeve tattoo on an upper arm and shoulder, showing a daisy, peonies and a tulip bud with dotwork shading.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Peony and daisy sleeve on upper arm

Botanical · Upper arm · Black and grey · Photo

The tattoo covers the upper arm and shoulder with a floral arrangement of a large daisy-like bloom, two peonies and a tulip bud on a curling stem, with leaves filling the gaps. The linework is dark and even, with stippled dotwork shading in the centres and around the lower peonies. The design is shown in two side-by-side photographs, one front-facing and one from the back, against a black top.

Botanical Dotwork Upper arm Shoulder Flower Peony Daisy Tulip Bud Stem Leaves

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Get in under the awning, you'll drown stood there looking at me like that. Aye, that's it. Now, you'll want the peonies first, everybody does. The daisy's a showy thing, all face and no manners. The peonies are the ones with a story, because they only last a week in May and they weigh more than they've any right to.

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Back in the sixties this market ran up Cross Street, all barrows and tarpaulin, and a lad called Jim Hebden pushed his cart past the bloom stall every morning. Nell Broadbent kept that stall. She had a laugh you could hear over the buses, and she sold tulips past their best at half price with the words, 'They've one more day in them, same as me.' Jim bought one every Monday and never got round to saying anything else. Come May he started bringing her a peony, wrapped in brown paper so the rain wouldn't spot it, heavy as a fist and full of ants, which she'd shake out on the step with a look that said she knew exactly what he was up to.

Then the council shifted the market off the street, and Nell's pitch went to a man who sold phone cases. She married a fella from the gas board that autumn. Jim still came up Cross Street on Mondays, rain or not, and left a peony on the railings by the old bus shelter, tied with string. Nobody took them. He kept at it three springs running. On the fourth, when he went back, the railings held a single tulip bud, green and tight, with a bit of card under the string that said only: 'Too early for you yet, Jim. Try again in June.'

Now, the daisy. That one I'm told was for Nell's funeral, a daisy the size of a saucer, because she never once in her life liked a fuss. See the dots in the middle? That's rain, that is. Stippling, the artist calls it. I call it weather. Right, pass me that bucket, my hands are going, and mind the ants in that one.