Shaded sunflowers and a fairy with pink wings on a person's upper back, with black and grey shading and touches of pink and green.

Sunflowers and fairy across upper back

Botanical · Back · Mixed · Photo

Three large sunflowers in shaded black and grey frame a small fairy in a green dress with pink-tinted wings. Swirling linework appears near the wings and at the upper left. The shading is soft and layered around the flower heads, and the colour is limited to the fairy's wings and dress.

Botanical Realism Back Sunflower Fairy Wing Swirl

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

You find her in the window of Tallis and Mott, the florist's on Corbel Lane, just after the last bus has gone past and the shutters are half down. She is sitting on the rim of a metal bucket as if she has been waiting for someone to notice her. Behind her three sunflowers lean against the glass, their heads gone heavy and dark, and the streetlamp makes their petals look like the edges of old paper.

Keep reading

"Are you shutting up?" she says, though her mouth doesn't move. The voice comes from the back of your own head, low and bright, like a radio left on in another room. You tell her the shop is closed. She tells you the flowers were cut too early and somebody ought to carry them to the park before the frost takes the last of the gold. You say you are not a delivery service. She says nobody is anything until they are.

You pick up the bucket because your hands want something to do and because the street is empty enough that nobody would see. The walk takes you past the chip shop, the dry fountain, the bus shelter with its cracked poster for a holiday you will never take. Every few steps the flower heads swing round to follow the lamps, slow as compasses, and the fairy hums something that sounds like a kettle coming to the boil.

At the bandstand you set the bucket on the bench. She unfolds her wings, pink at the edges as if the lamplight has bruised them, and lifts off without a word. The sunflowers stay turned towards the place where she was, stubborn as sentries. When you look back from the gate, the whole bench is glowing faintly in the dark, and the city keeps going around it.