Black and grey botanical tattoo of two flowers on long stems across the upper arm and shoulder, with dotted swirls beside the stems.

Two black and grey flowers on an upper arm

Botanical · Shoulder · Black and grey · Photo

The tattoo shows two large flowers, which may be poppies or tulips, with long stems curving down the arm. The petals are built from soft grey washes and darker accents, giving a smoky, painted look, while stippled dotted swirls sit beside the stems. The close, slightly angled photo shows a bare shoulder and upper arm against white fabric.

Botanical Dotwork Shoulder Upper arm Flower Poppy Tulip Stem Swirl

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 wash never sits where you tell it to. You have spent six weeks at the bench under the skylight in Whitstable, thinning sepia ink with rainwater until it stops looking like ink and starts looking like weather, and still it pools in the wrong corner of the paper. Mrs Dunmore wants two tulips for her late husband's tea tins, the petals fading out at the edges so the lids look like they were painted at dusk.

Keep reading

She sits on the stool by the radiator and watches you dab at the second bloom with a squirrel-hair brush. 'He used to say the stems were the only honest part,' she says. 'Hard black, no apology.' You have never painted a stem without thinking of that. You lay the first one in a single pull, fast, the way she asked, and it wobbles off the page like a fishing line in a current.

The dotted swirls take longest. You stipple them with the very tip of a mapping pen, one speck at a time, the way your nan stitched buttonholes while the kettle boiled, and by the time you finish your wrist aches and the light has gone grey over the harbour. Mrs Dunmore leans in, looks for a long while, then slides her thumb across the smoky petals as if testing a cheek for fever.

'Too dark,' she says, and you feel the old panic rise. 'No. Perfect. He'd have hated it and framed it.' She pays in cash, folded twice, and leaves the tins on the bench to dry. Afterwards you find a single speck of ink on your own knuckle and let it stay there.