Fine line tattoo of pink, blue and purple butterflies with a dotted swirling trail and small stars on the outer thigh.

Butterflies and stars on a thigh

Fine line · Thigh · Colour · Photo

The tattoo shows several butterflies in pink, blue and purple with soft shading on their wings, linked by a thin dotted line with small star shapes that curls around the thigh. The linework is fine and dark reddish-brown, while the wings use gentle gradients of colour. The butterflies are spread across the upper and middle thigh, with the largest blue butterfly placed near the centre of the image.

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dear Tom,

Keep reading

The silk came up from the boat smelling of tar, and I have spent three evenings deciding which blue is honest. Mrs Abernethy wants the ballroom curtains finished by Saturday, and she wants butterflies on them. I told her velvet in February is a poor canvas for anything that flies. She said her late husband kept a glass case of them in the study, and she would like them loose again across the hem.

My first sketch came out heavy at the wings, the way a child draws them. So last night I walked down to the pier with a tin of chalk and watched the swifts turn over the water until the light went. Their path was never a straight line. It looped, doubled back, then ran off in a thin scatter, and I realised the dotted line needed to be that: a route rather than a border.

I pricked the whole pattern out on the studio floor with a pin, following the loops from the corner of the hem round towards the centre, and at each turn I set a small brass star. The holes showed under the lamp like a trail someone had walked before me. Then I laid the silk over it and went home to bed without tidying anything.

On Saturday she stood under the finished curtain with her gloves in one hand and counted the stars with a finger, out loud, all the way round. When she reached the big blue one near the middle she stopped and said nothing for a long time. Then she asked me to leave the pins in, so that when the lamps went down the holes would still show. I said I would.

Yours, Ada

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