Realistic red hibiscus flowers with green leaves and buds trail from the shoulder down the middle of a woman's back, seen from behind in a room with framed paintings.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Red hibiscus flowers down a back

Realism · Back · Colour · Photo

A woman with dark hair is seen from behind, with a white garment draped over one shoulder and arm. Large red hibiscus blooms with pink and dark red shading, green leaves and unopened buds run in a curving line from the shoulder blade down towards the lower back. The soft, muted tones of the room and the warm light on the wall keep the colourful ink as the focal point.

Realism Botanical Back Hibiscus Flower Floral Bud Leaves Vine

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 hibiscus had come up through the chapel floor the summer after the roof went, and by the time Mrs Vell hired me to clear the bailey, it had climbed the north curtain wall and was reaching for the arrow slit above the well. I was meant to be cutting back bramble. Instead I stood with the secateurs open and watched a bloom the size of my palm turn slowly on its stalk, as if it were still deciding whether to stay.

Keep reading

"Leave the red ones," she called from the gatehouse steps, a flask of tea in each hand. "My husband brought the first cutting back from a wall in Lisbon the year before the fire. He said it would outlive the family."

"Did it?"

"Nobody has counted yet." She handed me a cup and sat on a fallen merlon, her knees drawn up under her coat. "Cut the buds if you must. They only open in the afternoon, and they never last past dusk."

I worked until the shadows crossed the lawn, lifting the bramble from the foot of the wall. That was when I found the stone. Beneath the thickest part of the vine, on a block the ivy had not quite swallowed, someone had cut a pair of initials and a date, and beside them a smaller mark: a single bud, drawn with the same careful hand as the flowers above it. I left the secateurs in my bag, climbed the rubble to the arrow slit, and pressed my palm flat against the warm stone next to the open petals.