A grid of black butterfly designs in varied wing shapes, from detailed linework to solid silhouettes, shown on a white background.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Black butterfly flash sheet

Black and grey · Flash

Sixteen butterfly designs are arranged in rows on a plain white background. They range from detailed wings with inner patterns and fine veining to bold solid silhouettes, with some wings drawn as outlines only. All the designs use black ink with no grey tones or colour.

Butterfly Wing Silhouette Insect Flash sheet

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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

Right, sit down, the ones at the back, I can see you pretending you didn't hear me. Forty-one years I taught in the room above the boiler, and I'll tell you what I told you then: nobody ever drew a butterfly properly first go.

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Miss Halloran kept a shoebox of stencils in the art cupboard at Crossgate Primary, sixteen butterflies cut from card and gone soft at the corners from tracing. Some had lace along the edges like a doily, some had veins fine as cobweb, and some were just a black shape with the wings folded up tight. Every September the new intake fought over the big solid one. Every September I took it off them and gave them the lacy one, because the lacy one was the hardest, and they hated it for a fortnight and then loved it.

There was a boy called Terry Mabbot who could never stop himself filling in. He'd take the veined wing and blacken it right to the edges until the pattern ran like ink in a puddle. I remember him at the window with his tongue out, shading away, and me saying, Terry, the light has to get through somewhere. He didn't understand that until he was grown, I should think. Then a postcard came from Lanzarote with a silhouette on the front, all shadow and no detail, and on the back he'd written, you were right about the gaps.

So go on, lift your hands and show me the shape you chose. Folded, open, lace or solid, it doesn't matter. The light gets in wherever you left it alone.