Close view of a pink rose sleeve tattoo with grey linework leaves and petals across the upper arm and elbow, in botanical style.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Pink roses sleeve on an upper arm

Botanical · Upper arm · Colour · Photo

The sleeve shows several large pink roses in varying stages of bloom, with loose petals drifting above them. Fine black outlines and grey leaves are drawn with hatched shading, and the roses have soft pink gradients. The composition runs diagonally down the arm, with a woman's red hair and a mint lace bralette filling the left side of the frame.

Botanical Neo-trad Upper arm Forearm Rose Petal Leaves Sleeve

Find an artist for this

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

The customs post at Hollin Bridge had been shut so long that the roses grew through its barrier rails, and nobody on either bank thought to cut them back. Every June a gardener named Idris Vell walked his strip of the riverbank with a pair of shears he never used, counting the blooms that had crossed over to the other side.

Keep reading

His neighbour across the water was a widow called Marta Oskar, who kept the far bank tidy and sent him a jar of honey each autumn wrapped in newspaper. The roses were at different stages that year: some tight and green-pink as a fingernail, some fully spread and heavy, a few already dropping their petals onto the current. Idris noticed that the petals which fell on his side were always fresh, and the ones that drifted toward Marta were always torn at the edges, as if the river had argued with them on the way.

One spring the guards came with a new form and a new rule: nothing living could cross the bridge. Idris stood at the rail with his shears and asked what counted as living. The officer looked at the petals caught on his boots and said he would have to ask his superior. Marta answered by tossing a single bloom into the water. It floated under the bridge and came out on Idris's side, a full pink cup turning slowly in the eddy.

The rule was never written down, so it was never enforced. By August the petals had carried every colour of the valley down to the sea, and the officer had taken to pinning one to his cap each morning. Idris kept the honey jars, Marta kept the shears, and between them the bridge grew roses faster than anyone could count.