Black and grey fine line tattoo of peonies, buds and leaves centred on the sternum, with hands resting over the chest above it.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Peony bouquet on the sternum

Fine line · Chest · Black and grey · Photo

A cluster of peony-style flowers, buds and leaves is centred on the sternum, fanning upwards and outwards. The design uses fine black outlines with grey shading and small stippled dots among the foliage. The ink is black and grey only, set against pale skin, with hands covering the upper chest at the top of the frame.

Fine line Botanical Chest Peony Flower Bud Leaf Bouquet

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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 Tom, the road closed again on Tuesday, so the carrier who was meant to bring the peony roots from Ledbury has gone back down the valley with his cart still full. I have the fire lit in the back parlour and six guests asleep upstairs, and I am writing this at the kitchen table with the sleet ticking against the glass.

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You will laugh, but I have been drawing them again. Mrs Gorse left a pot of ink behind in October and I found it under the bread bin. The peonies in Mother's old book are all heads and no stems, big heavy blooms that look ready to tip over, with the leaves cut into sharp points and a scatter of seed dots in the gaps where the bees would have been. I tried to copy the way the bunch fans out, the bud on the far side that never opened, the single stalk standing straight up at the top like a candle wick.

Last night a man came in out of the white, soaked to the knees, carrying a clay pot wrapped in sacking. He would not give his name. He said the roots were for a garden in the next valley where a woman had asked for them before she died, and that the snow had caught him on the pass. I gave him a bed by the stove. In the morning the pot was empty on the sill, the sacking folded neatly beside it, and three pale shoots were pushing through the soil of my own window box.

I have pressed one of my drawings between the pages of the ledger for you to see. It will not flower until April, but I think it will. Come back before the thaw if you can, and bring whatever is left of the ink.