Black and grey botanical tattoo of two peonies, small buds and blossoms in a bouquet with stems and leaves, in fine line style on the inner forearm.

Peony and wildflower bouquet on a forearm

Botanical · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

The tattoo shows two large peony blooms with layered petals, surrounded by smaller buds and five-petalled blossoms, with long stems and leaves trailing down the forearm. The work uses fine, precise outlines with hatched and stippled shading on the petals and leaves to create depth. Only black and grey ink is used, and the bouquet is centred on the forearm against a plain background.

Botanical Fine line Forearm Peony Flower Bouquet Bud Blossom Leaf Stem

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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

Mum, the peony roots came up black and knotted on Tuesday, and Dad says I've buried the good ones under the potatoes, which is a lie, because I know exactly where every eye is. I wrapped each one in damp newspaper and put them in the apple store, where the cold sits like a dog at the door.

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The snow came Thursday and stayed. You'd have laughed at me up the lane with the feed bucket, skidding in those wellies that were never mine to lend. The ewes are heavy and the hens have stopped laying except for the speckled one who thinks she's clever. I've been sketching the big blooms from last June's photograph, the ones by the gate, their petals folding over like a stack of wet linen. I'm trying to get the hatching right so they look like weight and not just lines.

Here's the thing I didn't say on the phone. Gran always called hers pinks, and I checked the tag in the box under her bed, and it says peony, so she was wrong about that for fifty years. The little wildflowers she planted for the bees came back on their own, the five-petalled ones nobody bothers with. I keep thinking how she'd laugh at the bunch I'm making of them, all mixed up together.

Come in March when the frost lets go. Bring the shears. We'll divide the clump by the water trough and you can take the biggest root home in your bag. If it dies on your windowsill, at least it will have tried somewhere that wasn't a city.