Woman seated on a striped bed showing traditional tattoos on her upper arm, forearm, hand and lower leg, including roses, an eagle and a portrait.

Traditional arm and leg tattoos with roses

Traditional · Upper arm · Mixed · Photo

A woman sits cross-legged on a striped bed, with her face out of frame, and displays tattoos across her upper arm, forearm, hand and lower leg. The work includes an eagle on the upper arm, a portrait of a man in a cap, a black rose and a red rose on the wrist and hand, and a leaping animal on the lower leg, with dark bold outlines and ornamental filler. Colour ink in red, green and orange sits alongside grey shading, and the framing is a close, casual crop against a grey blind and pink cushions.

Traditional Upper arm Forearm Hand Calf Eagle Rose Portrait Man Fox Dagger Seahorse Sleeve

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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 Nell, the snow has been up to the sill since Tuesday and Father has given up on the lane. The carrier's cart is somewhere under it, and so, I suspect, is the post. I am writing at the kitchen table with the lamp turned low, because the parlour fire has gone out twice and the ink thickens if I leave it. Four guests remain.

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There is a surveyor from Leeds who snores like a saw, a widow who plays patience every night and cheats at it, and a young man who arrived on Monday with a canvas bag and no luggage ticket. He signed the register as Ward, though the name was pressed so hard into the page it nearly tore. Every evening he sits by the fire whittling a fox from a length of driftwood, and it is better than anything in the shop windows at Scarborough.

Last night the fox slipped from his hands and skittered under the settle. When I knelt to fetch it, his sleeve rode up and I saw ink climbing his forearm, a red rose the size of a shilling, and a dagger bound with a ribbon. He pulled the sleeve down and said nothing. Then, as if the silence had cost him something, he took a creased photograph from his bag, a man in a peaked cap with a face like a weathered boot. "My grandfather," he said. "He sailed with an eagle on his shoulder and a rose for every port he could not come back to." I asked which port he had come back to. He looked at the fox and said, "This one, I think."

This morning the fox stood on the mantel with its ears up, and the snow had stopped. Ward has gone, but he left the carving on my windowsill with a note beneath it that says only, Keep the seahorse safe. I do not know what seahorse he means, and I am half afraid to look too closely in case there is one hidden in the wood. Write soon, if the post ever gets through. Your loving sister, Ada.