Black and grey drawing of a realistically shaded rose with watercolour ink splashes and a curling stem, shown as a tattoo design on white paper.

Shaded rose design with ink splashes

Realism · Black and grey · Flash

A realistically shaded rose in full bloom forms the central subject, with soft pencil-like gradations across its petals and small droplets of water on the outer petals. Loose watercolour washes, vertical drips and splatters in dark grey and blue-black surround the flower, and a looping, scrolled stem curls beneath it. The composition sits on a plain white background in black and grey tones only.

Realism Botanical Rose Petal Stem Watercolour Splatter Ink drip Swirl

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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

Hold the lamp low, Jamie, you'll not see the rest of it otherwise. Harbour's always been a hard place to read after dark. Back when the Corrie fleet still went out of Skerrow, there was a skipper called Tobias Keir who had a boat named for his mother, and a wife who kept a black rose in a jar on the net-loft sill.

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Nobody grew black roses in Skerrow. The salt took everything that wasn't tough as rope. So Marian drew them instead. She'd sit with a stick of charcoal and a saucer of grey ink made from the soot off the stove, and she'd work the petals until they looked wet, a single drop caught on the outer leaves where the fog had settled. Tobias said the sea was jealous of her hands, and that was why it came for him in February.

The squall came off the Pinnacles faster than any gull could run. Eleven boats were in, and the twelfth was Tobias, and the wheelhouse lamp went out at half past four. The women walked the wall until the tide turned. Marian walked it alone. Come first light, she found one rose pressed flat against the stone steps, petals still beaded from the spray, and its stem curled round the iron ring like a line someone had tied off in a hurry.

She never drew another. The boat came home two days later, drifting with the engine dead, Tobias asleep under a tarpaulin with his hand still on the tiller. He said he'd steered by a grey shape on the water that wouldn't sink. Marian said that was only ink. He said that was what he meant.