Two black and grey botanical tattoos of poppies with stems, buds and leaves, one on each forearm, drawn in fine linework with dotwork shading.

Poppy tattoos on two forearms

Botanical · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

Two forearms are shown, each with a black and grey poppy tattoo featuring an open flower head, a closed bud, long stems and serrated leaves. The linework is fine and the petals and seed head are shaded with stippled dots, giving a detailed engraved look. The larger design on the right forearm runs the full length of the arm, while the smaller one on the left sits higher and is set against a plain grey background.

Botanical Dotwork Forearm Poppy Flower Bud Leaf Stem

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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

The nib clogs for the third time before the steward's boy brings fresh ink, and you curse the salt that gets into everything aboard the Cordelia, even the spine of your sketchbook. Three weeks out of Bombay, the poppy you cut from the purser's wife's window box has bent its head over the chart room rail, and you have decided to draw it before the sea takes the colour out of it.

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You begin with the petals, which the captain calls fussy work. He says line is for lawyers and dots are for botanists, so you stipple, one small point at a time, until the thin paper darkens like a bruise under the lamp. The dots thicken toward the centre where the seed head sits, a cap of ridges like a pepper pot, and you count them in the dark watches to keep from thinking of the coast you left. The serrated leaves take an afternoon each. The stem you draw straight down the page, because the ship will not stay still long enough for anything else.

The closed bud you save for last. It has not opened once in the whole voyage, and you give it more dots than anything else, shading its grey-green skin with the patience of someone who expects to be asked for it. When the drawing is done you press the real flower between blotting paper, fold the sheets into a packet, and write the Kew address in your neatest hand. At Gravesend the pilot takes the packet down the ladder in his oilskin, and you watch the small dark shape of it go out across the grey water of the tide.