Traditional style tattoos on a forearm, including a red rose, a spool of red thread and a bee, with the hand holding a white pot with a succulent against a plain white background.

Traditional rose and thread tattoos on a forearm

Traditional · Forearm · Mixed · Photo

A forearm and hand, held up against a plain white background, carry traditional style tattoos in bold outlines. The main motifs are a red rose with green leaves, a spool of red thread with a needle, a banner scroll, a bee and a few botanical sprigs. The hand grips a white pot holding a spiky succulent, and the mostly neutral composition keeps the focus on the colourful ink.

Traditional Forearm Hand Rose Thread Spool Needle Banner Bee Leaves Succulent Plant Pot

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

The galley of the Mary Ellen smelled of tar and scorched flour the morning the cutting came aboard in a tin pot. Nobody wanted the thing. The bosun said a succulent was bad luck on a hull, but I had seen one growing in a Lisbon window and wanted something green that needed no rain.

Keep reading

I kept it wedged by the porthole, where sea spray dried salt on the glass. Each watch I threaded a needle with red cotton and mended the canvas bags the rats had nibbled, working the stitches between peeling potatoes. One June afternoon a bee came in through the hatch and sat on the rim of the pot for a full minute, as if it had paid its fare.

In the Bay of Biscay the pot slid across the table twice in a gale. I lost a spoon and two plates but not the plant. The cook before me, old Haskett, had drawn roses on his forearm in Portsmouth and told me a rose was for the girl you meant to come home to. I said I had no girl. He said a rose was for the one you were still hoping for, which he thought a better answer.

At Bristol I carried the pot down the gangway in both hands, as if it were a hot dish. I left it on the quay wall with a note tucked under the rim: For whoever is next in the galley. Water it on Sundays. We sailed on the evening tide, and I did not look back until the light at Avonmouth was a single yellow point.