Shirtless man with a black NY cap covering his face, showing traditional style roses, a heart and script lettering on his chest, abdomen and full sleeve tattoos on both arms.

Traditional roses and lettering across chest and arms

Traditional · Upper arm · Mixed · Photo

A shirtless torso and arms with a face hidden by a black cap, the hands gripping its brim. Bold black linework and grey shading form red roses, a heart, a banner and script lettering across the chest, abdomen and both arms, with dark grey detail on the sleeves. Red ink on the roses contrasts with the black and grey work, and the plain pale background keeps the focus on the skin.

Traditional Lettering Upper arm Forearm Chest Other Rose Heart Banner Lettering Script Sleeve

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The roses went on first because Dolly Pratt would not have the lettering before the flowers. She stood on the slipway in her late husband's coat and watched me mix the red, a lead-based colour her father had sworn by, and she said a rose without thorns was only a bloom with manners. I laid the first petal while the tide turned under the boats.

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Her son Ray wanted the banner, a ribbon curled beneath the heart, with MOTHER across it in letters that looked as if they had been cut with a bread knife. I lettered them in black on an upturned crate, the brush held like a pencil, one stroke at a time. Ray stood at my shoulder smoking and asking whether the lines would hold through a wet winter, and I told him that good black sinks in and stays put.

The rain came in March and did not leave. The black letters crept into the red petals until MOTHER read like a bruise on a pale wrist. Dolly looked at it for a long while from the quay, the water running off her hat brim. "That's the truth of it," she said, "bleeding a bit at the edges." Then she walked home without her umbrella, and I kept the tin of lead red on the shelf, unopened.