Colour botanical tattoo of a pink peony with dark green leaves and foliage on a forearm, with a floral-print fabric and a potted plant by a window behind.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Peony and foliage tattoo on an arm

Botanical · Forearm · Mixed · Photo

A large pink peony bloom with dark green leaves and shaded foliage covers the forearm, with a small bird-like shape near the wrist side of the design. The linework is clean and the petals are shaded with soft pink and red tones, while the leaves and stems use darker greens and grey. The arm is raised against a floral and fruit-patterned fabric, with a window and a green houseplant softly out of focus behind.

Botanical Forearm Peony Flower Leaves Foliage Bird

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dad had the lock-keeper's word that we could tie up below Hatton, which was the only reason we were still on the Ashby arm when the rain came in sideways. I sat on the front step of the Wren with a tin of cream paint between my knees, trying to work out why the peony on the cabin side had gone the colour of weak tea. Grandad painted it in the summer of 1979, free-hand, while Nan held the kettle and told him the petals were too fat. They were, and he admitted it, but he had never once painted over anything he'd started.

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Dad came up the towpath with two mugs and a face like the weather. The bank had gone at Shenton, he said, and the Trust man wanted us off the water by morning. I asked him what we were supposed to do with a boat that could not move. He shrugged and handed me a mug, and I saw he was looking at the little green bird Grandad had tucked among the leaves near the back doors, the one you had to look twice to find. "Your nan named that one," he said. "Said it was the only sensible thing on the boat."

We sat there until the rain eased, drinking tea that scalded the roof of my mouth, and then I took the fine brush down from its hook. I did not touch the peony. I went round its edge with a single careful line, the way Grandad had shown me, and tucked a second bird into the leaves on the far side, facing the first, so the pair of them could keep an eye on each other across the water.

In the morning the bank had held, just, and Dad untied us without a word. I stood on the step with the brush still behind my ear and watched the wet paint dry in the sun, both birds catching the light, neither one of them willing to look away first.