Small fine line black and grey rose with a thin stem and two leaves, tattooed on the upper leg of a person lying on white sheets.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Small rose tattoo on a thigh

Fine line · Thigh · Black and grey · Photo

A small rose with a closed bud sits on a stem with two leaves that curve up and out. The linework is thin and delicate, with light grey shading inside the bud. The pale skin and white bedding make the tattoo stand out in the centre of the frame, with the rest of the limb and bed filling the background.

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

Brother Anselm has been dead nine years, yet the rose he planted against the south wall of the infirmary garden insists on keeping its own calendar, so it is you, not the abbot, who must decide whether it gets cut back before the frost. The secateurs are blunt. You work them slowly, because the stem is thin as a bootlace and the brick is cold under your palm, and because Brother Gerard has twice this week asked why the garden ledger holds no entry for the thing at all.

Keep reading

The ledger turns up in the potting shed beneath a sack of bone meal, its spine soft with damp. Anselm recorded everything: the first frost, the blackbird that nested in the medlar, the day the well ran sweet again after the drought. Every rose he ever coaxed into bloom has a date beside it and a few words in his cramped hand. Yet this one has only a small pencilled sketch, a stem curving out to two leaves, and beneath it a single line: Bud not yet open. Do not hurry it.

You understand, standing there with the blades open, that he meant the note for whoever came asking, not for the abbot and not for the infirmary. So you hang the secateurs back on their nail, turn to the last clean page, write today's date, and under it: Rose, closed. Left as it is.

When you walk out through the gate the light is going, and the bud is still grey and shut against the brick, its two leaves lifted a little, like a pair of hands held open and waiting to be told what to carry.

More like this

Close-up of a small black fine line arrow tattoo on the inner wrist and forearm, with a hand resting above it and a plaid sleeve below.
Fine line arrow on the inner wrist
Fine line black tattoo of a small leafy sprig with two long stems on the inner forearm, with a braided bracelet on the wrist above it.
Small botanical sprig on a forearm
Fine line tattoo of an arrow with feathered fletching and an open arrowhead, curving across the inner forearm near the wrist.
Fine line arrow and feather on forearm
Black and grey fine line tattoo of a small flowering sprig with leaves and a bud on the inner upper arm, below a striped sleeve.
Fine line flower sprig on the upper arm
Small solid black silhouette of a sitting cat tattooed on the side of the ribs, just below a dark waistband.
Sitting cat silhouette on the ribs
Fine line outline of a small crescent moon in black ink on the outer ankle, against white bedding.
Small crescent moon on an ankle
Fine line black tattoo of two thin branches with small flowers and a dotted crescent moon on the inner wrist.
Botanical branches and dotted crescent on wrist
Fine line black tattoo of the serotonin molecular structure on the outer thigh, with a hand and knitted sleeve visible at the top left.
Serotonin molecule outline on the thigh
Three small black bird silhouettes in fine line style on the outer elbow of a raised arm, with a rolled denim sleeve.
Three small birds on an elbow
Small black silhouette figures in a descending row across the ankle, shown in a simple outline style.
Four silhouette figures on an ankle
Small fine-line black tattoo of a pair of curly braces on the inner wrist, shown with the palm facing up.
Curly braces on the inner wrist
Small fine line outline tattoo of a smiling ghost in black ink on the inner wrist.
Small ghost tattoo on the inner wrist

From the plentytattoo archive, uploaded by a user. Is this your work? Ask for credit or removal.