Colour tattoo of a red rose with dark green leaves on the outer calf, with grey suede lace-up platform boots below.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Red rose tattoo on a calf

Botanical · Calf · Colour · Photo

A close view of a lower leg with a colour tattoo of a red and pink rose with dark green leaves on the outer calf. The rose has soft shading and defined outlines against bare skin. Two grey suede lace-up platform ankle boots sit below on a dark cushion, with the tattoo at the upper left of the frame.

Botanical Calf Rose Leaves Flower

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

Father said a caliga is only as good as its lacing, so I spent the winter learning to pull the thong through every eyelet and draw it tight without puckering the hide. The leather came up from the tannery in Southwark stinking of oak bark, and I worked it until my fingers cracked. Mother sold rosewater from the stall by the bridge and grumbled that my hands smelled of tanning when they should smell of petals.

Keep reading

The rose came in spring. A merchant from Gaul brought three cuttings wrapped in wool, the petals still a deep crimson, and Mother set them in a clay pot by the door where the damp could not reach them. She would not let me touch the flowers, so I watched them instead: the leaves going dark and glossy, the pink blush creeping up the outer petals like dawn on the river. I drew them on the back of an offcut with a burnt stick until Father said my charcoal lines were ruining good hide.

When the cohort came through needing new boots for the march to the wall, the sergeant asked for a close lacing that would not slip on the road. I gave him the tightest I knew, every loop drawn taut as a bowstring. He paid in good bronze and asked where I had learned such work.

Before he left I stitched a small rose onto the inside flap of his left boot, where the laces cross and no one looks. Mother said it was foolish work for a soldier's boot. I told her the road to the wall is long, and a man should have something red to look at when his feet hurt. Father, who had said nothing all winter, tapped the last with his knife and said nothing still, which in our house meant yes.