Realistic purple tulip tattoo with a yellow wash behind it, on the top of a foot.

Purple tulip on the top of a foot

Realism · Other · Colour · Photo

A realistic purple tulip with a partly closed bud and a curved green stem is tattooed on the top of a bare foot, with the toes visible at the bottom of the frame. Shading moves from pale lilac highlights to deep violet and near-black, giving the petals volume, while the stem and leaf are rendered in muted green. A soft yellow and orange wash sits behind the flower, and the composition centres the bloom.

Realism Botanical Other Tulip Flower Stem Leaf Bud

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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

Tuesday, 03:10. Ward 4 is quiet except for the drip pump in bay two, which clicks every forty seconds like someone tapping a pen. I have been awake for eleven hours and the only thing I can hold steady is the tulip on the windowsill at the end of the corridor. Mrs Okonedo's son brought it in on Sunday, a bulb forced in a chipped blue pot, and it has been behaving badly ever since. Last night it was a green fist. Tonight the petals have loosened into a dark violet cup, the colour of a bruise going off, with a paler lilac edge where the light from the nurses' station catches it.

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Mr Halloran in bed seven asked me what it was for. I told him nothing, that's the point. Flowers that don't have to do anything. He said his wife used to buy tulips from the market on Castle Street because they were the cheapest thing that looked expensive, and then he laughed until the cough got him, and I sat with him while it passed. The amber glow from the corridor lamp lay across his blanket like spilt custard. I wrote his observations down and my hand was not quite steady, which I put down to the tea.

At half five the bloom had opened fully, almost black at the heart, and the stem had bent over the rim of the pot as if it wanted a look at the car park. I should not take it home, I know. But Mr Halloran goes home on Friday, and the bed will be stripped by Saturday, and nobody on this ward keeps anything for long.

I wrapped the pot in a clean pillowcase, wrote his name on a sticky label, and stood it on his locker where the morning sun would reach it first. Handover is at seven. I will tell them the tulip is his. It is, now.