Black and white photo of a man with a large rose tattoo sleeve on his raised forearm and a rose on the back of his hand, his face turned away.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Rose tattoos on a raised forearm and hand

Botanical · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

A black and white photograph shows a man with his face turned away and his hand raised near his head. Shaded roses cover his forearm and the back of his hand, with smaller marks on his fingers and a tattoo visible near his neck. The shallow depth of field blurs the dark background, and the sugar skull patterned shirt sleeve sits beside the tattooed arm.

Botanical Forearm Hand Neck Rose Sugar skull Finger tattoo

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

Sit down, sit, the road will still be here when the cool comes. You want to know why the roses in Vallecito bloom in November? Then listen, because my grandmother told me this under the same bent fence post, and she only lied on Tuesdays.

Keep reading

There was a painter named Ysidro who lived past the last well, where the road gives up and turns to gravel. He painted sugar skulls for the feast of the dead, each with a name piped in white across the forehead. Every year he made one more than there were people in the village, and every year someone asked him why. He said the extra was for whoever came walking up the road in the dry month, wanting their own name back.

One October a man arrived with ash on his boots and no bag over his shoulder. He asked for roses. Ysidro had none, the heat had taken every bush that summer, so he took his brushes and a jar of cochineal and painted petals onto the stranger's forearm, one for each year the man had been gone. Counting took until dark. The stranger left before morning, and the roses on his arm kept opening in the cold as if they had been waiting for the right hand.

Next spring the bushes by the well came back red, every one, and Ysidro's skulls sold out before the lamps were lit. Nobody knew whose name he had piped on that extra skull. I have always believed it was the stranger's own, and that he finally came home. Now finish your tea and mind the gate on your way out.