Realistic colour tattoo of a pink rose with dew drops on pale petals, shaded with black smoke on the upper arm.

Realistic pink rose on an arm

Realism · Forearm · Colour · Photo

A photograph of a large pink rose tattoo on the outer arm, with its bloom in the centre and pale petals curling out behind it. The rose is rendered with smooth, blended shading and soft highlights, and water droplets sit along the petal edges. Black shading fades into the skin around the design, which frames the rose against the arm.

Realism Botanical Forearm Rose Petal Water droplet 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

You learn the florist's back room by its smell before you learn its hours. Wet stems, cold water, the sweet rot of the bucket nobody emptied on Friday. Mr Galloway keeps the good roses under a sheet of damp muslin, and he lets you lift it only when the shop bell has gone quiet and the rain has started on the skylight. Today there is one bloom he has saved for you, a deep pink rose opening at the heart while its outer petals still hold the morning in their folds.

Keep reading

He asks you to carry it to the Ashdown house before the afternoon train. Mrs Ashdown was married on this street in 1931 and has not once come into the shop since, so the order arrived in pencil on the back of a seed packet. You hold the stem like a candle. Drops of water sit on the pale petals and roll, slowly, toward the edge where they gather and fall onto your wrist.

She answers the door herself, in a cardigan the colour of weak tea. She does not take the rose at first. She looks at it through the gap in the door as though measuring it against a memory, and then she asks whether it was Galloway who cut it or the boy who has been sweeping for him. You tell her it was Galloway. She nods, takes the flower with both hands, and says nothing else, only lifts it to her face and breathes in until the dew on the petals is smudged by the warmth of her cheek.

On the walk back you pass the bus shelter where the posters for the summer dance have begun to peel. Your sleeve is damp to the elbow, and there is a faint pink stain on your fingertip that will not wash off until Tuesday.