Colour realism tattoo of a red rose with water droplets and green leaves on the forearm.

Realistic red rose with dew drops

Realism · Forearm · Colour · Photo

A large red rose in full bloom fills the frame, with its outer petals opening around a tightly curled centre. Soft gradients of pink, red and crimson give the petals volume, and small highlights mimic water droplets on the surface. Dark green shading and two leaves with droplets sit at the base, set against a black and green background that fades into the skin.

Realism Botanical Forearm Rose Petal Leaf 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

The fair came to Little Wenhope the week the hedges turned brown, and by the second night the ground was too soft for the big wheel. Tomas Quill, who ran the coconut shy, found an old woman sitting on an upturned crate at the far gate. She had a tin bucket at her feet and a single red rose in it, its petals open as wide as a saucer. She said it was the last rose in the county and would not see morning unless someone kept the dew on it.

Keep reading

Tomas laughed and offered her a shilling. She shook her head and asked only that he sit with it through the night and sprinkle water from the standpipe whenever the drops began to fade. He thought it a pleasant madness, so he carried the bucket to the back of his stall beside the paraffin lamp. Each hour he went out with a cup and wet the leaves, and each hour the little beads stood up again on the petals as if they had never left. No rain came. The fairground lights went out one by one until only his lamp was burning.

Near dawn the cup ran dry and he had nothing left to pour. He knelt in the wet grass and breathed on the bloom, and the petals loosened, and a single drop rolled from the curled centre onto his wrist. At first light he went to pack the shy and found the crate empty, the gate latched from the inside. The rose was pinned to his coat with its stem wrapped in damp cloth, and every leaf still wore a bead of water. The fair left the village that morning with the wheel in pieces on the lorries, but Tomas never again let a bloom go dry in his care.