Close view of a shoulder and upper arm with a white ink tattoo of floral and leaf patterns, placed across the shoulder and upper arm.

White ink floral pattern on upper arm and shoulder

Botanical · Shoulder · Black and grey · Photo

The photograph shows a woman's bare shoulder and upper arm, with a tank top at the left edge and red hair at the top of the frame. A dense ornamental pattern of flowers, leaves and lace-like motifs is applied in white ink, so it shows only as pale lines against the skin. The soft, even lighting and plain grey background keep the focus on the pattern, which covers the shoulder and extends down the arm.

Botanical Shoulder Upper arm Flower Leaves Lace Floral pattern Mandala White ink

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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 have been climbing the broken stair for three mornings with a drawing board under your arm, because Mrs Garrow says the chapel windows at Hollin Keep were tracery before they were ruin, and the lichen that has crept over them since the roof went has grown into the exact shape of the old flowers. White crust follows each mullion, rosettes sit where the glass once was, and thin lines curl out of the leaves like the ghost of a hem. She wants them copied before the next gale takes them.

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The wind comes off the North Sea and finds every gap in your coat. You kneel on a cold sill and work with a silverpoint, pale on pale, because Mrs Garrow insists on the honest method. Nothing is added to the stone. You only note what the weather has already written. A jackdaw watches from the gable and does not help.

By the end of the week the sheets are heavy with rubbings. Mrs Garrow pins them along the workroom wall and sets the bobbins going, forty pairs clicking on the pillow like rain on slate. The lace that comes off the cushion is so fine it shows only as a shadow of thread, a pattern you can read only when you hold it to the window. She lifts one length from the table and drapes it over the back of a chair, and in the grey light it is nothing but pale lines, rosette and leaf, the flowers of a chapel that no longer has a roof.

"Stone keeps a pattern a while," she says, smoothing a fold with her thumb, "but cloth remembers it longer."