Black and grey shaded sunflower tattoo with a dotted seed head on the forearm, photographed on a blanket.

Sunflower on the forearm

Botanical · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

A large sunflower fills the frame, with outlined petals shaded in grey and black to suggest depth and curl. The seed head is built from fine dots and small stippled rings, and the background is a soft shadow around the petals. The image is black and grey throughout, with some glare on the skin from the photo light.

Botanical Forearm Sunflower Flower Petal Seed head

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

At twenty to five Ruth Abernethy pressed the last of the sunflower seeds into the dough by hand, working them outward from the centre in tight rings the way her father had shown her in the kitchen above the chip shop in Keighley. The ovens ticked as they warmed. Beyond the front window the street was still the colour of wet slate, and the only light came from the sodium lamp on the corner and the orange glow of the proving cabinet.

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Her father had never been one for fancy bread. He called the seed loaf the dull one and sold it to the men off the early bus, because they bought it without asking questions. Ruth had argued for a year that it could be a showpiece. Last week she had finally scored a boule with petals fanning out in darker crust and a seed head of dense black dots at its centre. Nobody had bought it. An old woman had turned it over in both hands and asked whether it was a cabbage.

Now she slid the tray onto the peel and into the heat. Steam rolled against the glass and beaded on the inside of the door. She set the timer for thirty-five minutes and sat on an upturned crate by the back step, listening to the first van grind up the hill. Above the sink, the window had begun to show a thin grey line.

When the loaves came out the petals had lifted pale where the scoring opened, and the seeds had darkened to a sooty brown. Ruth tapped the base of the big one and heard the hollow knock she wanted. She carried it through to the counter, switched on the display light and set it at the front, where the glass would catch the first customer's eye as the door swung open.