Black and grey neo-traditional flash design of a woman in profile holding a rose, with banner lettering reading LUST is the THORN and LOVE is the ROSE.

Profile woman with rose and banner

Neo-trad · Black and grey · Flash

A drawn design shows a woman in profile with dark hair swept back, a beauty mark on her cheek and a bold eyeliner flick, leaning towards a grey rose on the left. A curved banner runs around the figure, reading LUST is the THORN on the right and LOVE is the ROSE along the lower left, framed by a dark leafy border. The work uses bold black outlines and soft grey shading on a dark background, with no colour ink.

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

Maxine has the whole room sorted before you've got your coat off, and by the time you reach the trestle table in the sports hall she's already told you who married whom, who went bankrupt in Benidorm and who still hasn't forgiven the head girl. You take a name badge from the box. It says KAY in purple felt tip, the name you left Harrowfield Grammar with, and you press it to your jumper as if it might fall off.

Keep reading

Then you see Terry Lusk by the squash-court doors, grey at the temples, holding a plastic cup of lemonade as if it owes him money. He was the boy who left a rose cut from his nan's back wall on your desk every Friday in the fourth year, wrapped in a page torn from the French textbook, and who, the week before the summer exams, told you that wanting someone and keeping them were two different sports entirely. You laughed. You thought it was clever.

He crosses the parquet slowly, the way you'd approach a dog you half remember. He asks if you still have the record player, the one you wouldn't let anyone touch, and you say it's in a loft in Dartford with the rest of your life. He nods at the corridor wall where somebody has pinned a faded photocopy of the leavers' photo, all of you squinting into the sun.

Love is the rose, he says, not looking at you, and you hear the rest of it in what he doesn't say: that the thorn is the part you chose to grab. You take the lemonade out of his hand, drink half and give it back, which is as close to an answer as you intend to give him tonight.

More like this

Traditional flash design of a woman's profile facing a crescent moon with a man's face, with a black and grey rose and leaves beside her.
Woman and crescent moon with rose
Traditional style flash design of a woman with a voluminous dark beehive hairstyle, red roses and a ribbon banner reading LOVE IS A LOSING GAME.
Traditional portrait with roses and banner
Traditional style flash design of a woman with curled hair, two blue roses, an eyeball and a banner reading I only have eyes for you.
Pin-up woman with roses and eyeball banner
Neo-traditional style illustration of a dark-haired pin-up woman with a red rose in her hair, with blue line roses shown across her shoulder as a tattoo design.
Pin-up portrait with rose and shoulder roses
Traditional style illustration of a pin-up woman holding a red rose, with teal line tattoos of swallows and flowers on her shoulders and forearm.
Pin-up with rose and swallows
Traditional-style flash design of a pin-up woman with sugar skull face paint holding a red apple, with a swallow, roses and a banner reading Wash Your Fruits.
Sugar skull pin-up with swallow and apple
Drawn tattoo design of a pale woman with closed eyes and red lips beside a masked face, with flowers and flowing black and red hair, in a neo-traditional style.
Woman and mask with red hair and flowers
Pencil drawing of a sugar skull tattoo design with roses, a diamond on the forehead and decorative swirls, shown without a body placement.
Sugar skull with roses flash design
Greyscale pencil drawing of a realistic rose with beads of a rosary draped over its stem, set inside a decorative oval frame, shown as a tattoo design rather than on skin.
Realistic rose and rosary in an ornate oval frame
Traditional style flash drawing of a woman's head with a red rose and green leaves in her dark hair, shown on a cream background with no body placement.
Traditional woman's head with red rose
Neo-traditional flash design of a woman with a tall beehive hairstyle, red lips, two hearts and a banner scroll at the base.
Pin-up woman with beehive hair and banner
Black and grey drawing of a woman with sugar skull face paint, a rose in her hair and a second rose beneath her face.
Sugar skull portrait with roses

From the plentytattoo archive, uploaded by a user. Is this your work? Ask for credit or removal.