Colour realism tattoo of a butterfly with purple and teal wings and black outlines, placed on the upper shoulder near the neck.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

3D butterfly on a shoulder

Realism · Shoulder · Colour · Photo

A butterfly is shown in flight, seen from a slight angle, with purple and teal wings edged in black linework and a dotted wing pattern. Soft gradients and shadow beneath the wings give the design a three-dimensional effect. It sits on the upper shoulder against reddened skin, with a thin gold chain visible across the neck at the top of the frame.

Realism Shoulder Butterfly Wing

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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 ground the lapis twice and it still comes out too blue for the brothers' taste, so you take the pot to the window and try again. Abbot Hollis wants the butterfly on the chapter-book page to look as though it might lift off the vellum and drift across the cloister. He has asked for this in front of the whole scriptorium, which is how you know he means it.

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The violet is crushed orchil, the teal is woad worked with a little verdigris you scraped from the cloister bell, and the black you keep for the edges, where the wings meet the light. You dot the wing pattern with the tip of a goose quill, one small ring at a time, counting under your breath as you go. The hardest part is the shadow. A thin grey sliver lies beneath the lower wing, and when you finally lay it down the whole creature seems to hover a finger's width above the page.

At Compline, Brother Thomas stops at your desk with his lamp. He has always thought painted things a waste of parchment and says so now, but he holds the light steady a long time. He asks whether it will fly. You tell him it will fly as far as the next pair of eyes that looks at it, which is the only distance any painting has ever managed.

In the morning the scriptorium window stands open, and a real butterfly has settled on the sill beside your page. Its wings are closed, so you see only the pale underside, and it shares the drift of teal you spent all week matching. You do not move it. You let the ink dry around the small living thing and wait for the abbot to come and ask you what you have done.