Japanese style tattoo of a red cherry blossom branch with black and grey shaded limbs, running down the side of the torso.

Red cherry blossom branch down the side

Japanese · Ribs · Mixed · Photo

A branch of red cherry blossoms rises from the lower edge of the frame and curves up towards the top, with black and grey shaded branches and small black buds. The blossoms are filled with soft red tones and outlined in places, while the branch uses dark ink with grey wash for depth. The design is set against pale skin and fills the length of the frame.

Japanese Botanical Ribs Cherry blossom Branch Flower

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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 branch came off the boat wrapped in wet sacking, and by the time the crane swung it over the quay the bark had already split at one elbow. You signed for it because nobody else on the Tollgate dock would touch a cutting that old. The clerk wrote 'ornamental, Japanese, do not freeze' on the manifest and underlined freeze twice.

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Your aunt kept a walled yard above the harbour in Porthlevan, where the fishermen's wives hung nets to dry and the gulls nested in the chimney pots. She had grafted the tree by hand the spring before she died, black ink cut into the wood with a penknife, and she had left you a letter that said only: the blossom comes before the leaves, so do not be fooled by the bare wood. You read it aloud to the gulls. They did not argue.

You planted it against the south wall where the sun lay longest. Through February nothing happened except the rain, and the harbour master's boy started calling it the stick. Then one morning in March the buds opened all at once, red as the lamp on the breakwater, and the whole yard smelled sweet and faintly medicinal. The boy came up the steps without being asked and stood beneath it with his mouth open.

Her letter had one more line on the back, in pencil. Cut the branch that crosses the wall, it wants the light more than the roots do. You took the saw down from its hook and stood a long time with it in your hands before you went out to do it.