Realistic red rose tattoo in colour with black shading behind it, on the forearm of a person in a white top.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Realistic red rose on a forearm

Realism · Forearm · Colour · Photo

A large, fully open red rose fills the frame, with its petals shaded in deep crimson and lighter pinkish highlights. Smooth blended shading gives the petals depth, and small highlighted droplets sit across the surface. Black shading behind the flower adds contrast, and a blue wall and green sign are visible in the background.

Realism Botanical Forearm Rose Flower Petal Water droplet

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 rain came sideways off the Skerry all night, and by the time the lamp was wound you had counted the rose twice. Mrs Ferris had left it in the tin bucket at the foot of the stairs, a cutting from her walled garden at Porthgwarra, wrapped in wet sacking with a note that said only Keep it dry, which was never going to happen. You carry it up the hundred and twelve steps yourself, one hand on the rail and the bucket knocking your knee at every turn.

Keep reading

Its petals have opened further than they should for the journey, dark crimson at the rim and blown pale where the spray got at them. Beads of water sit across the outer petals like lenses no bigger than peppercorns. You set it on the sill beside the brass log and think of Walter Penhallow, who pressed a bloom between the pages of the 1931 volume and wrote beneath it, in careful copperplate, wind backing south-west, visibility good. The pressed flower is still there, brown as tea, and you have never had the heart to move it.

The relief boat is due at noon. At eleven the radio crackles and the coxswain says the sea is too big for the landing at the slip, and you are to hold until Tuesday. You look at the rose. It has already come through a day of weather and looks as though it might outlast you. So you take it out onto the gallery, where the wind pulls at the petals, and you hold the stem over the rail as the light begins its slow turn.

One petal lets go and drops. It falls a long way, turning, and lands on the grey water like a drop of paint on slate. By the time the next sweep of the beam passes, it has gone under. You go back inside and write in the log: wind backing south-west, visibility poor, one rose given to the sea.