A watercolour-style flower tattoo in red, orange and pink with loose black linework and blue and green washes, on the side of the ribs.

Watercolour-style flower on the side ribs

Ribs · Mixed · Photo

A large flower with five rounded petals and a long stem is drawn in loose black outline and filled with red, orange and pink washes that bleed past the lines. Blue and green splashes sit beside the bloom and run down the stem, giving a painterly, loosely finished effect. The flower is centred on the skin, with the stem running down toward the lower edge of the frame.

Ribs Flower Petal Stem Splatter Watercolour

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

Ruta had carried the flower across three rivers folded in wet paper inside the lining of her coat, because the guard at the bridge at Sellan opened every bag and trusted only what he could weigh. The bloom was a cutting from her mother's wall, red as a cooking pot, and it had already lost two petals to the mud of the fords.

Keep reading

He unwrapped the paper on the customs table and asked her what it was. She said it was a cutting for the widow at Harrow Mill, who had asked for a flower that would not die in winter. He turned the stem to the light and the water ran down it in black threads, pooling in the creases of the paper. He asked what it was worth. She told him it was worth nothing at all while it stayed dry, and everything once it was wet.

The guard held the flower up against the window. The sun came through the petals and the colours ran together, pink sliding into orange, the blue from the stream at Corran soaking down into the green of the stem. He watched it for a long time and then laughed, a short surprised sound, and stamped her papers without reading them. A thing that changes its colour in the rain, he said, cannot be counted, and he would not be the man who tried.

Ruta walked on up the north road with the paper folded tight in her hand. Behind her, where the stem had dripped as she crossed the bridge, a thin line of blue ran along the cobbles toward the guardhouse door, and nobody swept it up.