Fine line black botanical sprig with a dotted trailing stem on the upper arm of a person in a black dress.

Small botanical sprig on upper arm

Fine line · Upper arm · Black and grey · Photo

A small botanical sprig runs diagonally across the outer upper arm, with a few tiny leaves along a thin stem. A dotted line trails from the end of the stem, adding a delicate, airy finish. The ink is a single dark tone on pale skin, set against a plain black dress and a blurred indoor background.

Fine line Botanical Upper arm Sprig Branch Leaves Dotted line Stem

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

Mairi had the bait tubs stacked before the light came over the breakwater at Porthkerris, and she was not going to ask twice whether the Girl Ellen would sail. Her father's boots rang on the slipway. Gulls were already working the gutting table, shouldering each other for the grey scraps, and the harbour smelled of diesel and cold weed.

Keep reading

He stopped by the wall and pulled a sprig from his jumper pocket, a fistful of green jointed samphire he had picked off the mud at the harbour mouth. Its stems were beaded with salt. "For the pan tonight," he said, pressing it into her hand, "if we're not drowned." The Girl Ellen pulled away from the quay with her engine coughing, and Mairi stood on the wall until the boat was a dark stroke against the Mewstone.

The wind backed round to the south-west by noon. She sat in the lookout hut with the kettle and the tide table, counting the boats that came in, one, then two, then the third she had been watching for, low and slow. Her father stepped onto the quay with his cap in his hands and a face like weathered wood. Nobody said much. The boat was being hosed down when he came to find her.

At home she found the samphire where she had left it, standing in a jam jar on the sill with fresh water in it. The stems had kept their green, and from the lowest joint a single pale root had threaded down the glass, fine as a trail of spray off a bow. Her father looked at it for a long time, then set the kettle on and said nothing, which was how he said most things that mattered.