Fine line black botanical tattoo of two mirrored peony sprigs on the side of a ribcage.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Twin peony sprigs on the ribs

Fine line · Ribs · Black and grey · Photo

Two mirrored sprigs of peony-like flowers, with buds, leaves and thin stems, sit on the side of the ribcage. The linework is fine and dark, with light grey shading inside the petals and leaves. The design is in black ink only, and the pale skin and dark top around it give it strong contrast.

Fine line Botanical Ribs Peony Flower Bud Leaf Stem Sprig

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Ada Greave had painted the same peony on the bows of Skerrow harbour for thirty years, but Tom Pardoe wanted two this spring, one either side of the Marigold's hull, mirrored so they would curve toward each other like a pair of cupped hands. "Port and starboard," he said, rapping the planking with his knuckle. "Keep them close to the waterline. She's been heavy since Christmas."

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She worked through the early light with lead white thinned on linseed, while gulls squabbled over the offcuts on the slipway. The first sprig went down quickly: a bud on a wire stem, two leaves like open palms, then the big blowsy head with its tight inner petals and loose outer ones. She shaded the petals in grey so they looked folded rather than flat. For the second she did not look at her sketch. She turned her wrist the other way and let the brush find the same curve, and it matched better than she had any right to expect.

The Marigold went out on the ebb that Thursday and the weather came in behind her, the way it does on that coast. Ada stood on the wall with the other wives and mothers and counted the minutes, then the hours. Tom's daughter Ruth, who was fourteen and had not stopped arguing with her father since October, stood beside her with her arms wrapped round herself.

At dusk the boat came in across the bar low in the water and slow, and Ada saw the crew reach up and touch the two flowers as they passed beneath the bow, one hand on each side, the way you might touch a doorframe on the way out of a house. Ruth laughed, a cracked sound, and then she was crying too.