Black and grey botanical tattoo of sunflowers, a peony and small blossoms across a woman's shoulder and upper arm, in a floral dress.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Sunflower and peony shoulder tattoo

Botanical · Shoulder · Black and grey · Photo

A black and grey tattoo of two sunflowers, a large peony and smaller five-petalled blossoms with leaves covers the shoulder and upper arm. The design uses dark outlines with fine interior detail and soft grey shading on the petals. The photograph is black and white, cropped close on the arm, and the wearer's face is not shown.

Botanical Shoulder Upper arm Sunflower Peony Flower Leaves Blossom

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Mr Ambrose wanted the sunflowers first on the plate, big as dinner plates, because the Lincolnshire farmers bought whatever they could see from the road. I had already spent three weeks on the peony. It sat in the lower corner of the sheet like a bruise I had been asked to make pretty.

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I drew the sunflowers with a fine nib and a steady hand, petal over petal, the seeds packed in their dark spiral the way my father taught me to count the rows on a head. Ambrose stood behind my stool and said the shading was muddy. He wanted the grey lighter so the black would print clean in the catalogue. I did as I was told for two days, and then I did not.

On the Friday the plates went off to the engraver in Boston. I kept a proof back in my drawer, a small thing the size of a playing card, with the peony pushed up beside the sunflower so that it looked as if it were leaning in to hear what the sunflower had to say. Ambrose never noticed. The seed packets went out with the sunflower on the front and the peony on the back, where nobody would look unless they turned the packet over to read the sowing times.

My mother used to say a good flower always faces the light. I have kept that little proof for forty years, and every spring I still turn it toward the window.