Black and grey outline tattoo of two roses with leaves in Botanical style, on the outer thigh.

Two roses with leaves on a thigh

Botanical · Thigh · Black and grey · Photo

The tattoo shows two open roses of different sizes, one larger and overlapping the other, with several serrated leaves around their base. The work is mainly black linework with light grey shading in the petals and leaves, which gives a flat, outlined look. The roses fill most of the frame against plain skin, with a dark background on the left.

Botanical Thigh Rose Leaves Flower

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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

You are kneeling on wet flagstones at half past six with your grandmother's secateurs, because the florist has rung to say her van has broken down again and the bride wants roses by nine. The bush against the shed wall has run wild all summer. Some heads are open wide enough to show gold at the centre; others are still tight as fists. Cousin Dev is at the kitchen window holding a mug he has forgotten to drink from, asking whether the big ones will look like too much beside the small ones.

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You tell him they will not. All week you have sorted the blooms into two baskets without quite admitting why. The fullest go to the top table, where they will sit one against another like people who have known each other for years, and the tight buds go into the buttonholes for the men in grey waistcoats. Your grandmother planted the bush the spring she married, and she used to say a rose only keeps its shape if something is leaning on it a little. You thought that was the sort of thing people said at weddings. You were wrong about a lot of things that year.

By eight the marquee smells of wet grass and cut stems. You arrange the last of them in a jug on the windowsill of the bridal room, where the light comes in low and gold. The largest bloom has a leaf folded under its edge, and when you ease it free a single petal drops onto the sill. You leave it there. It is the only thing in the room nobody has asked you to fix.