Close photo of a realistic purple rose shaped into an elephant silhouette, tattooed on the outer thigh.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Purple rose elephant on a thigh

Realism · Thigh · Colour · Photo

A realistic rose with layered petals is set within the outline of an elephant, with the trunk and head formed by the petals and the body by the shaded, broken edges of the bloom. The work uses soft shading and fine detail in shades of purple and lilac, with darker mauve and reddish tones at the edges. The design is centred on the thigh and fills most of the frame against plain, lightly marked skin.

Realism Thigh Rose Elephant Flower

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

The gate sticks in wet weather, so you lean your shoulder into it the way Brother Columba showed you, and the elephant is already standing on the far side, trunk lifted over the wall as if she has been waiting since matins. Nobody at the abbey agreed to keep her. The travelling fair that brought her went north in the night and left a note on the kitchen table, and the abbot ruled that hospitality reached further than silence, which is why an elephant now eats windfalls under the cloister arches.

Keep reading

This morning's task is the old damask bed behind the infirmary, planted by a brother who died before anyone thought to write his name down. The roses there are the colour of bruised plums and smell of rain on iron. Columba says cuttings only take if they are wrapped in damp sacking and carried without speaking. You manage three. The elephant follows at a distance of one wall, tearing up grass with a wet sound, and every time you stop, she stops.

At the bed she reaches past you and takes a bloom in her trunk. She does not eat it. She holds it out, very carefully, and the outer petals loosen and drift onto her shoulder and the soft fold of her ear. You stand with the sacking in your arms and wait for her to decide what she wants, and she seems to decide you can wait a little longer.

By vespers the petals on her grey flank have darkened in the dew. She has lain down in the shade of the infirmary wall with the rose still curled in her trunk, and you find you are in no hurry to fetch the bell rope.