Black and grey botanical tattoo of peonies and roses with leaves and buds, wrapping from the shoulder down the upper arm.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Peony and rose flowers on an upper arm

Botanical · Shoulder · Black and grey · Photo

The tattoo shows several peony and rose blooms with leaves and a small bud, arranged in a cluster that runs from the shoulder down the upper arm. The linework is fine and dark, with soft grey shading that gives the petals depth and volume. The image is in black and grey, and the arm is shown in profile against a pale wall, with a framed print partly visible at the top left.

Botanical Fine line Shoulder Upper arm Peony Rose Flower Leaves Bud

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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

Dear Imogen, the frost came early to the north terraces again, so I have moved the peony cuttings into the lower bay where the glass still holds the afternoon. You will laugh, but I found the drawing you pinned above my bench before you left. Somebody had copied a whole cluster of blooms in pencil, peonies heavy as fists, roses packed tight at their hearts, and one small bud tucked at the edge as if it were keeping a secret.

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The old files in the archive say these flowers were gone before the Long Dark, and nothing in the seed vault matches them. I have tried to raise them from memory. The leaves came up too serrated, and the petals opened in grey instead of pink, which Tobiah says is only the light down here. Still, I sat with the sketch for an hour this morning, shading each petal with the side of my pencil the way you taught me, until the paper seemed to hold a little warmth.

Then the lift bell rang, and it was the supply runner from Harrow Gate, a boy with ink on his cuff, asking for the chit for the water pumps. He looked at the drawing on my bench and asked whether it was a map. I said yes. Some of them are.

He copied the bud onto the back of his hand before he left, so he could find the place again. Write back soon and tell me if yours has opened yet. Yours in the damp and the dark, Rhian.