Black and grey rose and floral tattoo on a man's forearm and hand, with lettering across the knuckles, shown beside a cuff of a striped shirt and a dark suit.

Rose and floral forearm tattoo

Botanical · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

A man in a dark suit and striped shirt shows a black and grey tattoo on his forearm, with a large shaded rose, smaller flowers and foliage running down towards the wrist. Lettering is inked across the knuckles of the hand, and a second tattoo of a woman's face in a headwrap is visible lower right. The shading is soft and tonal, and the photo is tightly framed on the arm.

Botanical Traditional Forearm Hand Rose Flower Foliage Lettering Portrait Woman

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dear Nell,

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The Marigold Rose is in port at Hull and I have finally got my hands on the bosun's drawing book. Old Tomasz kept it in the lazarette wrapped in oilcloth, and when I asked why a man who could not read a menu would keep a book of roses, he just tapped a page where a bloom had been shaded so soft you could almost smell it. He said the trick was to leave the light alone and let the grey do the work.

I have been perched on an upturned crate in the galley for three nights practising on the backs of spoiled manifests. My first rose looked like a cabbage. The second looked like a bruise. Cook says a galley is no place for a pencil, but the ovens are warm and the stew keeps itself, so I scratch away while the potatoes boil. Tomasz came down last night with his sleeves rolled, sat across from me without a word, took my pencil and drew a single petal curling outward, quick as a gull. "Shadow underneath," he said. "Always underneath."

He leaves the ship at Gdansk for good, and he asked me to keep the book, though he wants nothing for it. Before he went ashore he had the galley boy hold the lamp while he pressed a row of capitals along his own knuckles in the blue ink he had been saving. Four letters, one for each finger. When I asked what they spelt he only laughed and said the sea would read them, not me.

Nell, I think I will keep the book a while longer. I have sketched the rose eleven times now and the twelfth is nearly right. Tell Dad the stew is better than it was. Tell him nothing else.

Love, Jack