Black linework tattoo of a swirling tree with roots on a person's upper back, photographed from behind.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Swirling tree with roots on upper back

Botanical · Back · Black and grey · Photo

A black ink tattoo of a tree with a trunk, curling branches made of spirals and scrolls, and a root system that spreads across the bottom. The linework is consistent and fairly fine, with no shading, so the design reads as solid outline. The image shows the back of a person wearing a floral strappy top and a thin necklace, with the tattoo centred on smooth skin.

Botanical Fine line Back Tree Swirl Spiral Root Branches

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

By the third week of frost the ground at Lower Scrope had gone the colour of pewter, and you were the only one still willing to take a mattock to it. Your brother had driven the lambs to market in Kendal. Your mother watched from the kitchen window with her tea going cold. The ash at the bottom of the top field had been dead since you were a child, but the rooks would nest in nothing else, so the wood had to come down before March.

Keep reading

You worked the roots loose one at a time. They were not the thick, honest roots you expected. They split and split again into thin wiry curls, each turning back on itself, and where the frost had got into them they came away in pale rings like the coils of a spring. You filled a barrow with them and told yourself you were only clearing ground. By noon your gloves were soaked through and you had stopped pretending.

Under the last big root, wedged where no one would think to look, you found a tin no bigger than a bread loaf. Inside, wrapped in oilcloth, was a folded sheet covered in brown ink: the same tree, trunk and branches and spiralling roots, and beneath it in your grandfather's cramped hand, Plant it where the water finds it. You had never known he could draw.

You stood there a long while with the cold climbing up through your boots. Then you walked back up the field, past the byre and the frozen trough, and asked your mother for the seed packet from the dresser drawer. She didn't ask what for. The rooks were already circling over the bare ash, and you let them.