Black and grey realistic lily tattoo on the side of the ribs, with shaded petals and detailed stamens.

Realistic lily tattoo on the ribs

Realism · Ribs · Black and grey · Photo

A large lily flower in soft shading sits on the side of the ribcage, with its petals and stamens rendered in smooth greys. The linework is minimal and the form is built from gradual tonal shading and small dark speckles on the stamens, giving the bloom volume. The image is pure black ink and grey on a light skin tone, with a white garment at the top and a navel piercing visible at the right edge.

Realism Botanical Ribs Lily Flower Stamen Petal

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The paints went over the side in the Bay of Biscay, along with the second mate's cap and a crate of Mr Harrow's tinned peaches. Lamp-black was all I had left, a stick of it wrapped in oilskin, and a sketchbook with forty clean pages. I had been commissioned to draw the lilies of Hakodate for the Society, and the Society would expect colour. I had none, so I began.

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The bulbs had come aboard packed in wet moss, four crates lashed on the foredeck, and every morning I went down to check them before the watch changed. The flowers that opened in the forward cabin were a saffron no ink could match, so I drew them in wash, one grey laid over another, lifting the paper with a damp thumb wherever a petal caught the light from the porthole. The stamens I finished with the tip of a sable brush dipped in the blackest ink I owned, flicked so the dots fell like spilt shot.

Captain Tallis came to look over my shoulder off the Cape and said the drawings looked as if they had been done by moonlight. I told him that was the only light I had been given. He stood there a long while, then sent word to the galley that the lily woman was to take her tea in the chart room, which from him was a medal.

We reached Liverpool in March. The Society's secretary turned the sheets one at a time and asked where the colour was. I showed him the last one I had finished, the bloom drawn from the porthole, and told him grey is what a flower looks like after a long time at sea, when you have forgotten the yellow. He did not print them. I kept the book, and I still turn to that page when I want to remember how much light one flower can hold.