Black tribal-style tree design on a white background, with flowing flame-like branches and a solid trunk, shown as a flash drawing with no body placement.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Stylised black tree design

Black and grey · Flash

A solid black tree with a thick trunk and a crown of flowing, flame-like branches and leaf shapes. The linework uses bold filled shapes with curling swirls and small starburst details, and the design is drawn in solid black on a plain white background. The composition is centred and symmetrical, with the tree occupying most of the frame.

Tree Branches Leaves Swirl Trunk

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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

The rain has found the gap in the awning again, so you shift the crates of bare-root saplings towards the gutter and keep one eye on the queue of umbrellas pushing past the fish stall. Nobody buys trees on a wet Saturday in November. The ones who come do it for a reason, and the old man by the cheese van was the first, two weeks back, asking for something that would not drop its leaves until spring.

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You told him the truth, that the sapling in the blue pot was the wrong sort for a yard that small. It grew up like a bonfire, all licks and curls, and it would not stay quiet against a fence line. He paid anyway, in coins, and asked you to keep the dark one at the back of the van for him. You did, wrapped in sacking, and every morning since the sacking has been pushed out of shape, as if something inside had been reaching for the light.

Today the old man's grandson comes instead, hands in his pockets, asking about the tree you had refused to sell. You open the van doors and the smell hits first, wet bark and something like singed paper. The crown has worked its way out through the sacking. Every black leaf is curled towards the rain, and the drops bead on them and skid off without soaking in, the way water jumps off a hot pan.

He asks what you want for it. You tell him the truth again: nothing, take it home and plant it where the wind can get at it, and never water it from above. He laughs and pulls out the coins anyway, and when he turns away you see a first new shoot pushing up through the slats of the crate, dark as ink, already curling towards the grey sky as if it knows exactly where it means to go.