Colourful Japanese-style peony sleeve tattoo with pink petals, green leaves and dark clouds, wrapping the upper arm and shoulder.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Pink peonies and leaves on an upper arm

Japanese · Upper arm · Colour · Photo

Large pink peony blooms with green leaves wrap around the upper arm and onto the shoulder, with a darker grey cloud-like background behind them. The linework is bold and outlined, with soft shading in the petals and smooth blending into the dark background. The colour is vivid pinks and greens set against black and grey, and the design fills the frame from the shoulder down the arm.

Japanese Botanical Upper arm Shoulder Peony Flower Leaves Cloud Sleeve

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Sit down, the lot of you, and mind the gull at the end of the bench. He has been waiting for his share since breakfast and he will not be argued out of it. Now. You want the tale of the Ailsa Rose, or the one about the peonies? Good. Then hush, and I will tell it the way my grandfather told it to me, with the kettle going.

Keep reading

Forty winters back the Ailsa Rose went out from Scrabster with nine men and a boy called Tam Corrie aboard. She was a dull grey boat with a hull the colour of wet slate, and nobody thought much of her until the fog came down off the Pentland like a roll of damp wool. The men lost their bearings past the skerries. They cut the engine and listened for the bell buoy and heard nothing but the slap of water and their own breath. Tam's mother had sewn a pink peony into the lining of his oilskin, stitched in red thread by a woman who had never seen a real one, only heard a sailor describe it. Tam kept his hand flat on it all night.

Near dawn the cloud parted in long grey folds, the way a sleeve falls back from a wrist, and beneath them the water went green and gold. There was a headland with its lamp still lit, and the boat turned for it as if pulled on a line. Tam swore afterwards that the peony in his lining had grown warm, and that its leaves had lifted like a bloom turning to the sun.

Aye, I know. Nobody believes a boy's oilskin. But every man aboard came home, and each of them had a bloom drawn up his arm after, over the rope burns from hauling nets. So when you see the Ailsa Rose come round the point, look for the fog. Mind the gull. He is still waiting.