Hand-drawn design in a sketchbook showing two yellow sunflowers with black paisley-style leaves, swirling vines and a peace sign.

Sunflowers and paisley vine design

Botanical · Mixed · Flash

Two sunflowers with dark centres sit among black paisley-style leaves with fine hatched veins, curling vines and small dotted accents. The petals are shaded in yellow and orange pencil, while the leaves, swirls and vines are inked in solid black with stippled borders. The design is drawn on a spiral sketchbook page, with a peace sign at the lower end of the vine.

Botanical Sunflower Leaves Vine Paisley Swirl Peace sign Dot

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dear Tom,

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The 4.12 is cancelled again, so I am writing this on the bench at Ashby Junction with the sketchbook open on my knee. Mum would have a fit that I've bought a ticket to nowhere. The porter says the signal box is waiting on a part from Derby, and he says it the way men say things they have been saying all morning.

I drew the sunflowers you asked about. They grow in the long field past the level crossing, forty or fifty of them, all turned to the same side as if they are listening for the next train. I did the leaves in the black ink you left me, the paisley ones with the curls, because the woman at the florist's said sunflowers need dressing up or nobody looks at them. The peace sign at the bottom is Dad's. He scratched it into the back of the shed door the summer before he went, and I copied it so the vine would have somewhere to end.

The sun has slipped behind the goods yard and the petals have gone the colour of weak tea. I'll post this from Leicester if the train ever comes. Keep the sketchbook for me, or better still, keep the field. Tell Mum I've stopped checking the timetable.

Love, Nell