Black and grey dotwork tattoo of a rabbit with a bow, a bee and peony flowers inside a dotted geometric circle, on the thigh.

Rabbit, bee and peonies on a thigh

Dotwork · Thigh · Black and grey · Photo

A rabbit with a ribbon bow sits upright beneath a bee, both enclosed by fine dotted lines forming a circle and triangles. Three peony flowers with leaves fill the lower section of the design. The work uses fine engraved-style linework and stippled dots in black and grey, with shading on the fur, petals and leaves.

Dotwork Botanical Geometric Thigh Rabbit Bee Peony Bow Flower Leaves Circle Dot Triangle

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Mrs Hollis wanted the rabbit sitting up like a lady at tea, and she wanted the ribbon tied properly, not the lazy loop Tobias had given the last one. He sat at the bench with the burin in his fist and a magnifier strapped to his brow, cutting the fur one hair at a time, while a bee on the copper above the rabbit hummed against the window glass as if it had been trapped there since June.

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Tobias had engraved forty-one plates for the Carrow almanac, and not one of them had ever needed a stipple of dots to hold the eye. Mrs Hollis's husband had drawn the compass lines himself: a circle, two triangles, a scatter of points where the lines crossed. Geometry keeps a thing honest, he had written in the margin, in a hand like wire. Tobias thought it kept nothing honest. It only made a rabbit look as if it had been measured for its own funeral.

On the third evening the bee got out of the glass and walked across the plate. Tobias watched it pause at the peony in the corner, rub its front legs together, then bend its furred body into the first dot he had pricked that morning. He did not brush it away. He sat still and let it finish its small business, and when it lifted off he found the dot had gone bright and wet, the line around it fresh.

He finished the rabbit by the end of the week. The bow was tied perfectly. Mrs Hollis came for the plate, held it to the lamp, and said it was the finest thing Carrow had ever printed. Tobias said nothing. He had left one petal unshaded, the lowest one, and nobody noticed it but the bee, which came back every afternoon to sit on it.