Realistic colour tattoo of a purple chrysanthemum with layered petals and soft shading, on the inside of a forearm.

Purple chrysanthemum on a forearm

Realism · Forearm · Colour · Photo

A large chrysanthemum tattoo with layered purple and lilac petals fills the forearm, with pink tones in the centre and darker blue shading along the outer petals. The petals use smooth gradients and highlights to suggest depth and volume, with fine linework defining their edges. The flower is centred on a pale skin background, while a dark floral fabric appears blurred at the left edge.

Realism Botanical Forearm Chrysanthemum Flower Petal

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dear Ruth,

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The purple ones came out on Tuesday, the same week the frost held off, which Dad would have called a sign and Mum would have called luck. I've disbudded the whole top row the way he taught us, pinching out every side shoot so each stem puts everything into one head. Forty-one stems in the cold frame. Thirty-eight are fine. The three that split I've put in the bucket by the back door for the rag-and-bone man, not that he comes any more.

Mr Hollis from the society rang on Thursday to say the show schedule has changed and the class for incurves has gone. He wanted to know if we'd still enter the lilac Bronze Fairy. I said we'd see. You know what he's like about the judges, always wanting a bloom with the petals curled back like a fist of spider legs. I told him ours open like a firework that's thought better of it, outer florets lifting first while the middle stays shut, pink at the heart and blue in the shadow under each petal.

I cut the best one on Sunday and left it on the kitchen table with the window open. By the time I came down it had dropped a single petal onto the oilcloth, bright as a thumbprint in paint. I've pressed it in the book where Dad kept his sweet peas. Come home for the show. Bring the boys. You can tell them the flower was yours first.

Love, Jean