Black ink line drawing of poppies, buds and forget-me-not sprigs on a branching stem, drawn on cream paper, shown as a tattoo design.

Poppies and forget-me-nots flash sketch

Botanical · Black and grey · Flash

A pen and ink drawing of a branching botanical spray with a large open poppy at the top, several poppy buds and seed heads, and clusters of small forget-me-not flowers. The linework is fine and even, with hatched shading on the petals and leaves giving some depth. The design is drawn in black on a cream sheet with plenty of empty space around it.

Botanical Fine line Poppy Forget-me-not Flower Bud Leaf Stem Seed head

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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

Sit closer, the lot of you, the wind comes through that door like it owes somebody money. You'll want to hear about Walter Pike, who kept the crossing gates at Hollin Bridge for thirty-one years and never once let a train pass without lifting his cap to the driver.

Keep reading

The embankment behind his cottage was nothing but cinders and nettles until the spring his wife Edith went into the infirmary in Carlisle. Walter walked the line every morning after that, and every morning he came home with his pockets full of seed. Poppies first, the red ones that flare up in the cutting like somebody struck a match, then the little blue forget-me-nots from the ditch by the signal box. He scattered them along the bank as if he were posting letters, and he told the porters it was for Edith, so she'd have something to look at from the window when they brought her home.

She never came home. The company put a new line through in the autumn, the gates came down for good, and Walter was given a pension and a carriage clock. Nobody gave the flowers a thought except to grumble about the mess. But the poppies came up every June after that, thin and stubborn, and the forget-me-nots crept over the sleepers until a driver on the Thursday goods swore his brakes were full of blue.

Here's the bit you came for. Last summer the lads with the machines tore up the old track and went right down the cutting, and under the cinders they found a tobacco tin, rusted shut. Inside was a folded note in Edith's hand: Walter, plant them where the trains can see. I'll be looking out for them. So when the Thursday goods comes through, mind the blue along the bank. Somebody always is.