Side ribs tattoo of two red roses shaded in black and grey, with script lettering reading Shall I complain that rose bushes have thorns, partly hidden by a black strap.

Red roses and script on ribs

Botanical · Ribs · Mixed · Photo

The tattoo covers the side of the ribcage with a large red rose near the upper arm and a smaller red rose lower down, each with a grey stem and leaves. Fine black outlines and smooth grey shading give the petals depth, and the red ink is the strongest colour in the piece. Black script lettering runs between the roses, partly crossed by a black strap, and the lower part of the design is cut off by the frame.

Botanical Lettering Realism Ribs Rose Script Quote Thorn Stem Leaves

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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 Wardian case has been sweating since the Cape, and every morning you wipe its glass with the same grey rag you use on the brass. Inside, the cutting from the Canton garden stands in its crock of wet sand, three leaves the colour of old pennies and one bud that has not yet decided. Mr Hollis, the gardener who packed it, said a rose wants a month of dark and a season of rain, and that a sailor who talks to his plants will be talked to by them in turn. You have stopped laughing at him somewhere off the Horn.

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On the nineteenth day the ship rolled hard and the case slid against the rail. You caught it with your left hand and took a thorn in the meat of your thumb, a small hot bead that you sucked away before the mate could see. The blood went onto the glass in a thin line. You wiped it with the rag and told yourself it was nothing, and when you looked again the bud had opened a little, as if the thorn had been the price and the wound had been paid. Mr Hollis's phrase came back to you in his flat Kentish voice, something about complaining of a thing for what it is. You had thought it was a line for copying into a commonplace book. It was a question he had been asking all along.

At Plymouth the dockside was loud with gulls and carts, and a woman in a grey shawl stood at the gangway with her hands folded as if she had come to collect a parcel she had ordered years ago. You carried the case down yourself. When you set it at her feet she bent to the glass and did not touch it, only looked, the way you look at something you already know will hurt you. Then she lifted her eyes to your bandaged thumb and said, quite plainly, that she would take the thorns along with it.