Black line tattoo of a rose with leaves and stems in a botanical style, running down the side of a person's ribs.

Rose and leaves along the ribs

Botanical · Ribs · Black and grey · Photo

A large rose with several open petals and a sprig of leaves and buds is drawn in black outline on the side of the ribcage, with the stems curving up towards the top of the frame. The linework is even and fine, with no shading, so the design relies on the outlines and the vein detail within the leaves. The image is black and grey, with a small plaster on the lower abdomen and a hand holding a teal object at the top right.

Botanical Fine line Ribs Rose Leaves Bud Stem Flower

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Marta had been told the rose would not survive the pass. The carrier mule had already lost one crate on the switchbacks above Col de la Croix, and the salt-hardened stems had come through in a bundle wrapped in oilcloth, pale as bone. She unrolled them on the hut table at dusk while the wind pushed at the shutters.

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Her father had drawn roses for the monastery at the valley foot, always in ink alone. He said shading lied about light, that a line only told you where one petal stopped and the next began. She had his steel nib, worn thin at the tip, and his habit of pressing the wet sheet flat with the heel of her hand so the ink would not run into the veins.

The bloom was a late one, cut before the first frost. She worked from the outer petals inward, tracing each curl, then the leaves, following the veins until they ran out at the margin. Outside, snow had begun to lie along the cairn, and a lamp moved on the far path where someone was climbing up from the village.

When the door opened she had finished the stem and was on the last bud. She did not look up. She slid the drawing under the lamp so it would be the first thing the traveller saw, all line and no colour, a rose that would keep its shape through whatever the winter did to the paper. 'It is only outline,' she said. 'The rest is yours to fill in.'