Black and grey botanical tattoo of wildflowers and leaves framed by dotted lines, on the inner upper arm.

Wildflower bouquet on upper arm

Botanical · Upper arm · Black and grey · Photo

A bouquet of wildflowers, leaves and a long curved stem runs diagonally up the inner upper arm. The crisp black linework is combined with stippled dotwork shading in the petals, seed heads and foliage, and a dotted triangular frame sits around the arrangement. The tattoo is shown in black and grey on pale skin against a plain light background.

Botanical Dotwork Geometric Upper arm Wildflower Flower Leaves Stem Seed head Dotted line Triangle

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

The press had been screwed shut since the spring, and the damp had got into its cords, so you work the boards apart with a butter knife while the kettle goes cold behind you. The sheets come out stiff and smelling of old pennies. Most are what you expected: cow parsley, a foxglove gone brown at the edges, the feathery black seed heads of love-in-a-mist that he never could keep flat.

Keep reading

The last bundle is different. It is tied with green wool, and the sheets inside have been pricked at the corners and joined with a pencilled line, so each specimen sits inside a dotted triangle like a figure in a geometry book. The labels are in his square capitals. A forked hazel stem, bent like a shepherd's crook, reads CUT AT THE STILE, 14 JUNE. Beside the seed heads, in smaller letters: for N., who said the lane was too public for a walk.

You know an N. Everyone in the village knew Nell Harker, who kept the post office until her hands got bad and moved to her sister's in Frome. The dates run across eleven sheets, one for each fortnight of a summer you were too young to remember, and the last label says only: she has the wild carrot now, if she wants it.

You lift the wool and the bundle falls open, the stems dry as biscuit. You go out to the garden with the secateurs, cut one stalk of wild carrot from the verge by the gate, and lay it flat between two clean sheets. Then you draw the triangle yourself, dot the corners, and write her name in the margin.