A woman in a black dress and leather harness shows a sleeve of tattoos on her upper arm, shoulder and forearm, with floral and figurative details.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Tattoo sleeve on an arm and shoulder

Shoulder · Mixed · Photo

A woman in a black dress and brown leather harness is shown from the shoulder to the hip, with tattoos covering her shoulder, upper arm and forearm. The upper arm carries a larger figurative design with floral and foliage elements, with some muted reds and greens, while the forearm has finer grey linework and shading. The background is out of focus with blurred figures, which keeps attention on the arm.

Shoulder Upper arm Forearm Floral Leaves Sleeve Figure

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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

Dear Tom, the rose on the north wall came back this spring after everyone said the frost had finished it. Mrs Hadley cut it to the stool in February and I told her it would sulk and then sulk harder. Instead it put out shoots the colour of boiled sweets, the leaves turned green enough to make you squint, and there is a bud the size of a thimble sitting just under the gutter where the old drainpipe used to be.

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The lighthouse boy came up on Tuesday wanting cuttings for the keeper's wife. I gave him a bundle of ivy wrapped in damp sacking and a jam jar of the grey lichen we scraped off the greenhouse glass. He held it like treasure. I told him lichen takes a hundred years to grow a finger's width, and he said then the lighthouse must be made of it by now, which I thought was a fair point for a boy of nine.

You wrote that out there the sea only ever shows you the one colour. Here the beds are all shades at once, the foxgloves going purple at the throat, the fern gone to rust along its edges. I pressed a frond between the pages of the seed catalogue so you'll have something to hold that isn't salt.

Come home before the rose opens. If you're not back by the first of June I'll tie a strip of red wool to the gate so you can find the right path in the dark, the way Father did for the boats.