Shaded realistic red rose and butterfly tattoo with green leaves on a calf, photographed under ultraviolet light.

Red rose and butterfly on a calf

Realism · Calf · Colour · Photo

A large red rose sits at the top of a shaded leg tattoo, with a butterfly and green leaves and foliage running down the calf. The rose has soft, blended shading and the leaves are rendered with fine tonal gradients. The photograph is taken under ultraviolet light, which makes the red and green inks glow against a dark background and a tiled floor.

Realism Botanical Calf Rose Butterfly Leaves Foliage Flower

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dear Tom,

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The big top came down in Shrewsbury on Tuesday, and Father sat on the cable drum afterwards and wouldn't get up until the lads had carted the last of the ringside seats to the lorry. Mrs Pargeter's glass slipper act is gone, sold to a pub in Wem. We have four horses left and a clown who is also the man who drives the generator, so there is an odd sort of economy to it.

The black light is still with us, though. Last night, after the show, I took the old UV lamp out of the wardrobe and we ran it over the canvas panel in the back booth where Mother painted the flying rose years ago. Nobody has looked at it since she left. The rose came up crimson, its petals curled like a fist opening, and beside it sat the butterfly with the wire body Dad built to swing on a line over the crowd. The leaves lit up green as pond weed. For a minute it was the only bright thing in the field.

I think I'll stay with the show through the autumn. Dad says it won't last past the winter, and he may well be right, but a rose in the dark doesn't mind the weather. Write when you're settled and tell me whether the Lisbon crowds are as bad as the postcard said.

Love, Nell