Black and grey botanical tattoo of three roses with leaves and buds, running down the inner forearm towards the wrist.

Roses and buds on a forearm

Botanical · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

A cluster of three open roses with rosebuds and leaves is tattooed along the forearm, with the largest bloom in the centre and smaller flowers above and below it. The linework is fine and dark, with hatched and stippled shading that gives the petals depth and texture. The image is black and grey against a plain light background, with the arm filling the frame.

Botanical Forearm Rose Rosebud Leaves Flower Floral

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dear Tom,

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The lock at Hanwell Bottom is still jammed, so we have been tied up three days beside Mrs Okafor's garden wall, which is how I came to be sitting on the cabin step with a pair of her secateurs and a bucket of cuttings. She says the roses by the wall came up the canal from Leicester in a cargo of coal, sixty years back, and her husband's grandmother coaxed them along ever since. The old wood is grey as a mooring rope, but the new shoots are red at the tips.

I have been drawing them, the way you taught me, pencil pressed hard so the petals stand up off the paper. The big bloom in the middle opened first and has curled in on itself like it is keeping a secret. The two above and below are its sisters, later out and still a bit sulky about it. The buds hang off to one side, tight as knuckles. I shaded the leaves with cross-hatching so the light off the cut would show through.

Mrs Okafor came down the towpath this morning with her hand out for the pencil. She added a few dots of stipple to the back of my drawing, here and there, and said roses only do well when somebody keeps moving them on. Her husband ran a boat the length of the Grand Union until his knees gave out. I thought she was talking about roses. She was talking about us, and she was right, as she usually is.

I've wrapped the cuttings in wet newspaper and tied them to the roof rail. If they take, I'll plant one by the lock gates when we come back through in spring, so you can find it when you're passing and know which way we went. Your sister, Ruth.