Black line drawings of butterflies and blossom branches on a white background, arranged as a botanical flash sheet for tattoo designs.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Butterflies and blossom branches design sheet

Botanical · Black and grey · Flash

A sheet of black ink line drawings showing a range of butterflies in different poses and wing shapes, with blossom branches running along the top and bottom edges. The linework varies between bold outlines and finer interior detail, with areas of solid black filling some wings and petals. The drawings are arranged evenly on a plain white background with no colour.

Botanical Butterfly Blossom Flower Branch Leaves Wing

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The third pattern sheet had gone soft at the corner from the taproom damp, so Nell pinned it flat with two brass candle snuffers and went on inking. The snow had sealed the Hollin Gate inn since Tuesday. Carters, a curate and a man selling clock springs sat by the fire with their boots steaming, and every one of them had asked what she was doing with a bottle of Indian ink and her late mother's book of blossom patterns. She had told them the truth, which was that Edith Hallam wanted spring in the room before the lambs came.

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The blossom ran easily. Nell had drawn apple sprays since she was small, and the branches curled along the top of the wall as if they had been there all along. The butterflies were harder. Her mother had cut them from a Leeds printer's stock, and each one wanted a different hand. The swallowtail wanted a steady nib. The little brown fritillary wanted patience. The solid black wings, which her mother had loved best, kept swallowing the detail until the whole thing looked like a dropped glove.

Edith came in with the lamp at dusk and stood a long time in front of the wall. "Too dark," she said at last. "It's supposed to be spring, love, not a funeral."

Nell did not argue. She took her penknife and scraped the largest wing back to the plaster, line by careful line, until the black broke into frost and the pale wall showed through like light on a window. When she had finished, the butterfly looked as if it were only resting on the paint.

In the morning the wall held a dozen small creatures and a bloom of apple that had not existed the night before. Outside, the snow was sliding off the roof in one long white sheet, and somewhere below the village a dog was barking at the road as if it had only just noticed the way out.