Colour botanical tattoo on a shoulder and upper arm showing a large poppy, a yellow songbird, a purple artichoke bud, fern fronds and a poppy seed pod.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Poppy, songbird and artichoke on upper arm

Botanical · Shoulder · Colour · Photo

The tattoo covers the shoulder and upper arm with a large poppy bloom in soft pinks and greys, a purple artichoke bud, a yellow songbird perched on the bud, and green fern fronds behind. A poppy seed pod hangs at the lower left. The shading is smooth and detailed, with fine outlines on the petals and soft tonal blending across the leaves, and the composition wraps around the curve of the arm.

Botanical Realism Shoulder Upper arm Poppy Bird Songbird Fern Seed pod Flower Bud Leaves

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Nell had been told twice not to climb the gate in February, so she went over it on the third morning, boots and all, because the frost had kept the dog indoors and because the artichoke was still standing in the kitchen bed. Grandad had meant to cut it back in October. Instead it had gone to seed in a purple fist of a bloom, and the frost had furred every scale of it white.

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In the barn, the poppy heads from summer hung in a paper bag on a nail, grey-green and the size of thimbles. Grandad used to shake one by his ear and claim he could hear the seeds counting down the summer. Nell shook one now and heard nothing but her own breath. Then a yellowhammer dropped onto the bud outside, yellow as a yolk against the frost, and sang its scrap of a tune, a little bit of bread and no cheese, the way he had taught her to hear it.

She thought of the tin he kept on the windowsill, marked with the year, full of seed he had never sown. Nell carried the bag out and tipped the pods onto the frozen bed, then split one with her thumbnail and let the dark seeds fall through the frost in ticks, like someone counting out change. The yellowhammer watched from the purple bud, tilted its head, and sang the same bit of bread again, louder, as if it were waiting for her to get the sum right.