Black and grey realism tree tattoo with a shaded canopy and spreading roots across the upper arm and shoulder.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Tree with roots on upper arm

Realism · Upper arm · Black and grey · Photo

A large tree with a full, shaded canopy sits across the shoulder, with its trunk running down the upper arm and its roots spreading out in branching lines below. The linework is fine and the tree is built up with dense grey shading and dark accents, giving it depth and texture. The ink is almost entirely black and grey, with a faint reddish tone in some of the root lines, and the tattoo is centred on the arm against a plain skin background.

Realism Botanical Upper arm Shoulder Tree Root Trunk

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

By three the corridor lights have dimmed to their night setting, and you have counted the drip bags twice because the second count is the one you trust. Ward 7 breathes around you: a call bell somewhere, the wheeze of a commode being pushed past, Mr Okafor's radio murmuring the shipping forecast to nobody. You stand at the window at the end of the bay because your feet need a minute and the glass is cool against your forehead.

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Below, in the car park, the old oak has a lamp of sodium light up one side while the rest of it stays black. You know it only by its outline, the way its crown spreads wider than the building is tall. Last week the porter told you the council wants it felled because the roots have lifted the tarmac by the ambulance bay, and that the ground under it is a mess of old cables and older drains. You said nothing. You thought about how far down a thing like that must reach to hold up all that weight.

Your bleep goes at ten past three. Bed 12 has pulled out his line again, and when you reach him he is wide awake and apologetic, asking whether the tree outside is the big one. You tell him it is. He says his mum used to take him to sit under one in the park, and then he falls quiet, and you check the cannula, and the room goes still.

Back at the window before handover, the sky has turned the colour of wet slate. The branches are a tangle against it, and under them the dark trunk runs down into the ground and keeps going, further than you can see.