Black and white drawing of a moth with solid black wings, white eyespot markings and thin antennae, shown as a tattoo design.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Black moth with eyespots

Blackwork · Black and grey · Flash

A bold drawing of a moth seen from above with its wings spread symmetrically. The wings are filled with solid black, broken up by white dots, scalloped edges and rounded eyespots, while the body and antennae are drawn in clean black linework. The image is black ink on a plain white background with no colour.

Blackwork Traditional Moth Wing Antennae

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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 back door of the bakery on Saltergate has been propped open since three, because the ovens need the air, and by half four something has found its way in out of the dark. You notice it first on the rack of cooling tins, a black moth the size of a wrung-out tea towel, its wings opening and closing slowly as if it is breathing. Old Mrs Pryce would have swatted it. Her nephew Dafydd, who now runs the early shift with you, only shrugs and goes back to scoring the batch.

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You take it for a stray from the moor road, but it keeps choosing the warmest places. It lands on the proving cabinet, then the sill above the bread oven, then the wet lip of the flour bin. Each time it settles, the round marks on its wings look up at you, four pale rings with dark centres, and you find yourself talking to it the way you talk to the dough: low, patient, nothing that needs an answer.

At ten to six the sky over the chimneys turns the colour of weak milk. You pull the first tray of cobs from the oven, and the crust cracks like a struck match. The moth lifts with the steam and circles the rack once, close enough that you feel its air on your wrist, then drifts toward the open door.

Dafydd asks who you were talking to. You tell him nobody, and that the cobs are ready, and you slide the tray onto the counter where the light is good. Outside, the moth has found the lamp post on Saltergate and is holding still on it, wings flat, as if it has decided to wait for the bakers to finish.