Realistic red lily tattoo with black and brown scrollwork and leaves across a person's upper back, near the shoulder blade.

Red lilies and scrollwork across a upper back

Botanical · Back · Mixed · Photo

The tattoo shows several red lilies with shaded petals and stamens, joined by black and brown ornamental scrollwork and thin leaf sprigs. The lilies use soft shading and highlights, while the scrollwork has bold dark outlines and tonal shading. The design spreads diagonally from the shoulder blade down the side of the back, with the largest lily near the top.

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Sit closer, the rain's only in the first row. This is the tale of Mabel Quorn and the red lilies of Hollin's Travelling Fair, the one that came over the moor the summer the gasworks shut.

Keep reading

Mabel kept the swing boats and mended the canvas, and every night she painted on the back board of the Wheel of Fortune, because the showman swore the crowd would pay a penny more for a bit of colour. She never painted anything but lilies. Big ones, the sort that grow behind the chapel wall, throats freckled, stamens dusted orange as a fox. Her father had been a sign-writer and taught her how a scroll should lean out of the frame, as if it was listening for something.

The showman's girl, Ada, wanted a lily she could keep. Mabel told her flowers weren't for keeping, they were for leaving behind, and Ada cried all the way to Hexham. That night the wagons were packed in the dark, the Wheel was taken down, and the board went with it into the back of the lorry. Nobody thought to ask Mabel where her brushes had gone.

Next morning the field was bare except for the gatepost by the chapel wall. Someone had painted a single red lily there in the dew-wet paint, its black scrollwork running down the wood like a pen that would not lift. Ada still swears she saw Mabel's hand on the stem, though the gate was latched the whole night through. Go on, pay your penny, and mind the step.

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