Black and grey dotwork triangle filled with roses, tattooed centrally on the upper back of a woman with her hair up.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Rose triangle on the upper back

Dotwork · Back · Black and grey · Photo

A triangle filled with three roses sits centrally on the upper back. The roses are built from fine linework and stippled dot shading in black ink, with the petals and leaves rendered in layered grey tones. The plain pale background and the visible bra straps keep the focus on the tattoo, which is shown in a straight-on view.

Dotwork Botanical Back Triangle Rose Flower Geometric shape

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

The wallpaper in Room Four has lifted at the corner since the March gales, and Mrs Pardoe will not hear of a new roll before the season ends. So you kneel on the lino with a bucket of paste and a borrowed knife, easing down the curl of a pattern you have come to know better than your own handwriting: three roses packed into a triangle, each petal stippled so finely that the shadows seem to shift when the light from the sea window moves.

Keep reading

Mr Ansell, who sells steel buttons from a leather case and takes the front room every Thursday, comes up the stairs in his carpet slippers to ask why the roses point upwards. Mrs Pardoe says her father-in-law hung the paper that way so the damp would run off the points. Mr Ansell says that is nonsense, and you agree with him quietly, because behind the skirting you have seen the builder's chalk tallies, one small mark for every guest the house took in a bad year, and none of them are about damp.

Under the loosened flap, where the paste has gone dark, you find a pencilled line in a hand that is not the builder's: Walter, the summer I came back. Three roses, one each for us. You stop with the knife in your fist. The middle rose has been shaded heavier than the other two, dot upon dot, as if someone went over it again and again to keep it from fading.

You smooth the paper flat with the heel of your palm, wipe the excess paste from the skirting, and leave the window open so the wall can dry. When Mrs Pardoe asks if the job is done, you tell her yes. The middle rose is the only one that still looks wet.