Two pencil sketches of layered flower designs on lined paper, drawn as possible tattoo flash with no body part visible.

Two pencil sketches of layered flowers

Botanical · Black and grey · Flash

Two pencil drawings of layered flowers with overlapping petals are shown on lined notebook paper. The outlines are drawn with sketchy, varied line weight, with light shading inside the petals and around the centres. The flowers are arranged one above the other, with the lower one filling more of the frame.

Botanical Flower Petal Bud Sketch

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The net loft smelled of tar and damp rope, and Ada had given up on the ledger an hour ago. Her son Tomasz sat on an upturned crate beside her, pencil gripped like a fid, scratching petals onto the back of a catch sheet. Cod, haddock, three skate. Between the figures he had drawn a flower, then another above it, and she could see he had given up on the sums too.

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"You start at the middle," she said, and took the pencil from him. "No, the middle goes last. Otherwise it floats." She drew a cup first, then let the outer petals fold round it, each one tucked behind the one before, the way the boats came in past the breakwater, one behind another, until the harbour wall hid them. Tomasz pressed too hard. The lines came out black and stubborn, and she told him to go lighter and let the paper show through.

Outside, the late sun lay flat on the water and the men were calling across the quay about the weather. Tomasz leaned over his page with his tongue between his teeth and began a second bloom beneath the first, a wide ring of petals spilling down the sheet and overlapping like hulls at the mooring. He drew the bud last, a closed cup at the heart of it, and rubbed its edges soft with his thumb so it seemed to be waiting for something.

When the boats were in, Ada folded the sheet into her apron pocket with the day's figures. "Better," she said, and meant it. He signed the corner the way his grandfather signed invoices, then turned the paper over so the cod numbers faced up again, and the flowers stayed folded on the wrong side of the page.