Orange butterfly tattoo with black edging and a soft cast shadow, placed on the upper chest near the collarbone of a person wearing a grey top.

3D orange butterfly on upper chest

Chest · Colour · Photo

A butterfly with orange and yellow wings outlined in black is tattooed on the upper chest, close to the collarbone and shoulder. The wings are shaded to look raised from the skin, and a dark grey shadow falls beneath the body of the butterfly. The photograph is cropped at the neck and shows the tattoo against pale skin and a grey off-shoulder top, with a warm brown wall behind.

Chest Butterfly Insect Wing Shadow

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

Gather in, gather in, and mind the puddles by the fish stalls, because the rain has been at this market since before the kettles were lit. Now, you want to hear about Ada Penhallow and her butterfly. Everyone on this side of the river knows the story, but I tell it true every time, so sit yourselves down on those crates.

Keep reading

Ada kept a stall of painted paper lanterns under the iron awning by the clock tower. She painted every one herself, orange and gold, with black lines round the wings, and each night she hung them up so they glowed like small suns over the wet cobbles. One wet Thursday a boy came by with a cough and no coat, and she gave him the one lantern she had not sold, a monarch painted on its side, and told him to keep it lit until he got home.

He did not come back for a week. When he did, he brought the lantern wrapped in newspaper, and the butterfly had come off the paper. It was sitting on the wooden rail of her stall, orange wings opening and closing, and beneath it, on the grey planks, lay a shadow that had no lantern to belong to. Ada tried to brush it away with her sleeve. The shadow stayed where it was, a little darker whenever the rain came down.

Now, the old men will tell you the shadow was a debt. I say it was grief that had nowhere to sit, and the butterfly had come to carry it somewhere lighter. Ada never sold another lantern. She let the butterfly keep the rail, and every evening it lifted off into the drizzle and came back before the lamps were lit, and the shadow followed it home.

Mind your step going out. The planks are slick, and that shadow is still there.