Close photograph of a small black fine line tattoo of two botanical sprigs forming a V shape on the inner forearm.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Small sprig wreath on the inner arm

Fine line · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

A small tattoo of two leafy sprigs curving up from a crossed stem at the bottom, forming a open V or wreath shape. The linework is thin and even, with solid black ink and no shading. The tattoo sits centrally on pale skin against a soft, blurred grey top and wooden background.

Fine line Botanical Forearm Sprig Leaves Wreath Branch 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

The rosemary had gone woody along the south wall again, so I took the shears to it the morning after the last coach left, while the bay was still grey and the gulls were squabbling over the bins. Frank always said you had to cut rosemary hard or it would sulk and flop across the path. I filled my apron with the long sprigs and carried them through the scullery, past the copper and the wet boots, to the kitchen table where we used to shell peas.

Keep reading

A young man had come to the door a fortnight earlier asking for a room. He had a sketchbook under one arm and paid in advance, in notes folded very small. He left before breakfast each morning and came back after dark. On his last evening I found him in the garden, crouched over the herb border with a pencil behind his ear, drawing the stems where they crossed at the bottom. He said he wanted to get the way the twine held them. I told him that was a knack you only learned by tying bundles for forty years, and he laughed, which I hadn't expected.

The next morning his bed was made tight, the corners folded like a sailor's. On the dressing table he had left a sheet of cartridge paper weighted with a pebble from the beach. Two sprigs curved up from a crossed stem, open at the top like a pair of arms. Underneath, in small square capitals, he had written FOR THE SCULLERY HOOK. I hung it by the door, and when the wind came off the water it turned slowly, like a bell that had forgotten how to ring.

I tied the bundles for the new season this week, every stem crossed at the foot the way Frank showed me and the way the young man drew them. Before the first frost I cut one more sprig and bound it into a ring, so there would be something green to hang on the door when the next lodgers came up the path.