Colour realism tattoo of a pink rose with a water droplet and a faceted gemstone, framed by black dotwork and mandala patterns on a forearm.

Realistic rose and gem forearm piece

Realism · Forearm · Mixed · Photo

A large pink rose with a dew droplet on its petals sits at the centre of the design, with a faceted green and purple gemstone below it. Black mandala lines, dotwork borders and a honeycomb pattern surround the rose and fill the background. Soft shading gives the rose depth, while the gem uses bright, iridescent colour against the mostly black linework.

Realism Dotwork Botanical Forearm Rose Gemstone Water droplet Mandala Honeycomb Lace pattern

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 dew had not yet dried off the roses on Mrs Tregear's wall when I cut the best one with my penknife and wrapped its stem in a sheet of the parish paper. Nobody in Wheal Sorrel gave flowers to the pithead in those days. But the cage had come up at four with two men short, and by six the whole village was standing at the gate with its hats in its hands, and I wanted something in my hands that was not a shovel.

Keep reading

Old Jory Vane had been a timberman for thirty years and he knew the sound a level made before it gave. He told me to keep back from the winding house, so I stood at the wall with the rose and watched a drop of water on one petal shiver loose and run down into the leaves. Each time the wheel turned I thought of the stone Jory had shown me in the spring, a green thing the size of a thumbnail that he swore had come out of the thirty fathom level. He kept it in a tobacco tin under his bed. Nobody believed him, and nobody had ever seen it throw light the way he described.

When the first man came up grey and coughing, Jory pushed through the crowd with the tin in his fist and pressed it into my palm. Inside lay a cut stone, green at its heart and bruised purple at the edges, scattering colour across my knuckles like oil on a puddle. 'Take it to the chapel,' he said. 'Leave it on the altar with the flower. Tell them the mountain gave something back.'

I did. The rose wilted by noon, and the stone is still there under the brass plate, catching the light from the east window whenever the morning is clear enough to bother. The men who came up that day do not talk about the cage any more. They talk about the colour.