Large colour tattoo across a person's back showing a woman's portrait, teal peacock feathers, purple peonies, a bird and a ladybird, in a realistic style.

Woman portrait with peonies and feathers on a back

Realism · Back · Mixed · Photo

A large back piece shows a greyscale portrait of a woman with flowers in her hair, framed by teal peacock feathers at the upper back. Two large purple peonies sit at the lower back, with a teal bird, a ladybird and scattered pink petals nearby. The shading is soft and realistic, with bold colour in the flowers and feathers against the grey portrait.

Realism Botanical Back Woman Portrait Peony Peacock feather Bird Ladybird Petal 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

The ladybird came in off the cliff path just as the lamp was lit, and you let it walk the length of your thumb while the wick settled. Nobody on the rock had ever thought to keep a garden, so the peonies your mother sent in a biscuit tin from the mainland had been a scandal. Three of them were left by the second week, pink going brown at the edges, and you pressed their petals between the pages of the logbook because it was the only book on the station nobody read.

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Mr Ashdown, the keeper, said a light should be dull by day and honest by night, and he found your sketch of the tin's lid, with its painted woman in a lace hat, a frivolity. You had tucked a peacock feather into the corner of it because the one he kept from his brother's ship was the only thing in the room with any colour. Teal, he said, a word he had never heard, and asked where you had found it.

On the night the fog came in thick as wool, a teal bird from the crate of gifts flew through the open shutter and perched on the brass rail of the lens. You did not chase it out. You held the lamp steady and let it sing, because a light that keeps the ships off the rocks is doing its job, and Mr Ashdown, for once, said nothing at all.