Black and grey botanical tattoo of a vine with leaves and curling stems along the left side of a torso, above the waistline.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Vine and leaves along the ribs

Botanical · Ribs · Black and grey · Photo

A black and grey tattoo of a climbing vine with leaves and curling stems runs vertically along the side of the torso, over the ribs and down toward the waist. The linework is fine and delicate, with soft grey shading giving the leaves some depth. The photograph is a close, monochrome crop of the midriff, with the tattoo placed on the left of the frame and a navel piercing and black fabric at the lower edge.

Botanical Fine line Ribs Vine Leaves Stem Tendril Foliage

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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

The rain has been coming sideways across the market since seven, and by eleven you have sold two bunches of sweet peas and a crate of wilted kale. Mrs Okafor's gazebo has come loose at one corner, so you hold it down with your shoulder while she counts coins into her apron. Nobody wants a plant in weather like this. Nobody wants anything that needs looking after.

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The old man at the end pitch, who sells seed packets from a biscuit tin, tells you to take the clematis. He keeps a rooted cutting in a yoghurt pot under his table, something he dug out of a garden clearance in Halifax, and he says it has been twining round the handle of his umbrella for a month. You take it because he won't stop talking until you do. It is a thin green thing with leaves like arrowheads, and its tendrils reach for anything within reach: your sleeve, the guy rope, your wrist.

On Thursday you find it on the windowsill of the flat above the chippy, where you left it to fend for itself. It has climbed the inside of the frame and pushed out through a gap in the sash, and the leaves have gone the colour of wet slate. You stand in the street with rain running down your collar and count the curls. Seven turns, each tighter than the last, as if it has been measuring the distance between the glass and the sky.

Next Saturday you buy a trowel and a larger pot and sell nothing but compost. At closing you walk past the old man's pitch, and his tin is open, and he has already set aside a packet of runner beans for you. You leave the flat window open a crack, so the rain can get in and the stem can find its way down the outside wall, toward the market and the tin of seeds.