Black linework botanical tattoo of California poppies, buds and leaves on a forearm, shown in two side-by-side photographs.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Poppy and buds botanical on a forearm

Botanical · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

Two side-by-side photographs show a forearm covered in a botanical design of poppy flowers, closed buds, slender stems and leaves. The tattoo is drawn in fine black linework with soft grey shading on the petals and centres. The flowers dominate the centre of each frame, with leaves and stems running off the edges.

Botanical Forearm Poppy Flower Bud Leaves Stem Botanical

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

Dearest Ada, we have been becalmed three days off the coast of Chile and the men have taken to fishing with bent nails, so I have the cabin table to myself and a pot of ink that is nearly dry. I am sending the drawing folded in oilcloth. Do not let Father see it before you have looked at the buds. I drew them the morning after the storm, when the cliffs above Coquimbo were slick and the flowers had opened only where the sun reached them.

Keep reading

The flowers are not the orange of our poppies at home. They are the colour of a struck match held to a candle, and each petal falls back on itself like a cupped hand. Mr Pell the botanist swore they would not survive the crossing, so I pressed three in the Bible you gave me, the one with the broken clasp. Two have gone to brown dust. The third is still a little green at the stalk, and I have been carrying it in my breast pocket like a love letter.

Last night the boatswain asked what I meant to do with so many drawings. I told him I was only trying to keep the shape of things before the sea took them. He said the sea takes everything and we are the only ones who notice. Then he went below and I stayed up with the lantern, trying to get the shading right on the bud that never opened, because it seemed to me the most honest one of the lot.

If the wind comes round by Thursday we make Valparaíso and I will post this there. Keep a place for me on the garden wall. Tell Father the poppies are doing well here, and that I have stopped being sea-sick, which is a lie, but a kind one. Your loving brother, Tom.