Colour realism forearm tattoo of yellow roses with water droplets and a silver banner reading Grandpa, shown in two side by side photos.

Yellow roses and Grandpa banner on a forearm

Realism · Forearm · Colour · Photo

The tattoo shows two yellow roses with dew-like water droplets, green leaves, and a silver-grey banner across the centre that reads Grandpa in black script. The roses and banner are rendered with soft shading and highlights, with dark splashes and washes in the background. The image is a two-panel composition of the same forearm, with the design filling most of the frame.

Realism Botanical Forearm Rose Banner Script Water droplet Leaves

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Ruth had carried the watering can up the terrace for three summers before the pit closed, and the roses in the back yard of number nine had never once been allowed to dry. Her grandad said yellow was the colour for a man who had spent his working life in the dark and wanted something to look at when he came up blinking. So every Saturday she filled the can at the standpipe and stood beside him while he snipped the dead heads with his old pen knife.

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The banner came from the Co-op bakery van, a strip of tin the baker's son had painted for the Miners' Gala. Grandad would not let anyone else hang it. He pinned it between the two bushes on the wall with two rusty nails and complained that the G was doing too much, but he liked it all the same.

Then came the February morning when frost lay thick on the lintels and his chair stayed empty by the range. Ruth found the knife on the windowsill, still wet with dew, and the top rose had dropped a petal onto the step. She did not cry. She went out, filled the can, and gave both bushes a long drink the way he always had, until the water ran off the leaves and beaded on every petal.

By May the bushes were heavy again. Ruth stood on the step with the knife in her palm and cut the first bloom herself, carrying it in to set on the sill where the light fell.