Traditional style tattoo of a red rose with cream centre petals and green leaves on a forearm, with denim jeans visible behind.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Red rose tattoo on a forearm

Traditional · Forearm · Colour · Photo

A bold red rose with a cream-edged bloom and a pale centre, surrounded by dark green leaves with black outlines. The solid colour fills and heavy outlines are typical of traditional tattooing, and the design is centred on the outer forearm. The background shows blue denim jeans and a dark top, with the blurred body of the wearer.

Traditional Forearm Rose Flower Leaves

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dear Joan,

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You will think me soft for writing before the kettle's even on, but the rose bush by the back gate has finally opened, and I wanted you to know before Mr Haskett gets at it with his spray. Red as a pillar box, with that cream rim round each petal, as if someone dipped the edges in milk. He says it's the same stock his mother grew in Norfolk. I told him the leaves are too dark for a bush that's had a winter like ours, and he told me to mind my own business, which is fair enough.

The new lodger came on Tuesday, the quiet one with the sea trunk. He paid a month in advance in coppers and asked only whether the bath ran hot before seven. I said it did not, and he said that was all right, he liked to wait. Every morning since he has gone down to the front with a sketchbook under his arm, and yesterday he left it open on the hall table. Page after page of that rose, drawn from the landing window, the leaves done in careful little strokes, the shadow under the petals worked over and over until it sat right.

This morning the sketchbook was gone and a single sheet lay folded on my doormat. He had written at the bottom, in pencil, 'For whoever tends it.' I have pinned it in the hall beside the barometer, where the guests can see it on their way out to the sea.

Come up at the weekend and see it before the wind gets to the blooms. I'll put the good cups out.

Yours, as ever, Ada