Black and grey realism tattoo of a woman in an oval frame with a large rose and script lettering across the upper arm and shoulder.

Portrait and rose on upper arm

Realism · Upper arm · Black and grey · Photo

A large black and grey portrait of a woman with curled platinum hair sits in an oval frame at the top of the design, with a rose and leaves below. Smooth shading gives the face and hair soft tonal detail, while bold outlines define the rose, wings, heart and script lettering. The tattoo covers the upper arm and extends onto the shoulder, with the rose filling the lower half of the composition.

Realism Traditional Upper arm Shoulder Portrait Woman Rose Wing Heart Spider web Lettering Banner Leaves

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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 pawnbroker on Sable Street kept the oval portrait in his window because no one would buy it and no one would let him throw it out. Each night the gas lamps came on one by one, and the woman in the frame looked down the street as though she had an appointment with somebody who was late.

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Hettie Crane swept the shop step every morning, and every morning she brushed away the same spider's web from the corner of the glass, spun so fine it caught the light like wire. Her mother said a web over a door meant someone inside was patient. Hettie thought it meant someone inside was stuck. She carried a rose in her coat pocket, bought for a penny from the flower seller under the railway arch, its petals already browning at the edges, because the seller said a wilted rose was cheaper and told the truth.

On the night of the first frost she carried it to the window and tapped the glass twice, as the old porter had told her to. The painted eyes did not move. But the wings on the heart at the foot of the frame seemed to lift, and the lettering beneath, which had always said nothing she could read, spelt out the number 323 in fresh chalk. Beside it a door key lay on the sill where no key had been before.

She took it. The room at the top of the stairs at number 323 had been empty since the war, and the damp had written its own names across the wallpaper. Hettie opened the window, laid the rose on the sill, and went to bed without a light. In the morning the rose was gone and the key was warm in her palm, and the portrait in the window had turned, very slightly, towards the street where the lamps were going out.