Black and grey realism style back tattoo of butterflies, a floral burst and ornamental swirls spanning the mid to lower back.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Butterflies and swirls across a back

Realism · Back · Black and grey · Photo

A bare back shows a large black and grey tattoo of butterflies, feathery wing shapes and a central floral burst. Soft grey shading gives the butterflies and petals depth, while curling ornamental swirls run down towards the hip. The skin looks wet and the photo is taken from behind, with a tattoo partly visible at the top left shoulder.

Realism Back Butterfly Floral Flower Wing Swirl Ornamental Back piece

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

The rain had been falling on the Saltergate market since before dawn, and Mirela had given up on her stall's awning long ago. She sat on an upturned crate with a tin of pins in her lap, sorting the thin silver ones from the thick, while the traders around her hauled sodden cloth and shouted about the price of eggs. Nobody bought moth-wing brooches in the rain. She knew that. She kept the tray out anyway, because her grandmother had kept one out in the same spot, and the old woman had sold a brooch to a widower once who came back every year after to buy another.

Keep reading

A boy in a borrowed coat ran up the lane towards her, slipping on the cobbles, a folded square of paper clutched against his chest. He skidded to a stop at the edge of the tarpaulin and held it out without a word. It was a drawing, done in pencil and smudged where his thumb had rubbed it, of a butterfly larger than a hand, its wings fanned open over a tangle of ferns and curling vines. Beneath it, in careful capitals, he had written: FOR THE SHOP WINDOW. PLEASE. MY MOTHER SAYS YOU CAN MAKE ANYTHING.

Mirela looked at the drawing for a long time. Then she looked at the boy's wet shoes. "Anything is a big word," she said. "Come under here before you drown."

He crouched beside her crate while she pinned the paper to the awning post, and the rain drummed on the canvas above them. By the time the market lamps came on, the sketch had been copied in silver wire and hung in the window of the bakery opposite, its tiny wings turning slowly whenever the door opened. The boy came back each evening to check on it, and each evening Mirela pretended not to notice he was counting the butterflies.