Solid black butterfly silhouettes decrease in size as they trail from the nape of a woman's neck towards her upper back.

Butterflies trailing down the back of the neck

Neck · Black and grey · Photo

A woman with long, wavy auburn hair tied to one side is photographed from behind, showing a cluster of small solid black butterfly silhouettes. The butterflies grow larger toward the lower end of the trail, which sits just below the hairline and runs down towards the shoulder blade. The soft, warm-toned background and bare skin keep the focus on the dark ink against the skin.

Neck Back Butterfly Woman Hair

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 card was the wrong black, a shade too blue for the Palais, so Mr Hollis sent me down to the stockroom for the good stuff while the band tuned up overhead. I sat on an upturned crate under the cloakroom bulb and cut butterflies until my thumb ached. The trick, I'd worked out, was to start them small and let them grow as they came down the roll, so that the eye reads a flock coming to land instead of a row of cut-outs.

Keep reading

Mrs Pruett wanted them to lead from the cloakroom hatch up the staircase to the ballroom doors. I pasted them on with flour and water, the big ones low down by the skirting where a dancer's hem might brush them, the little ones high up near the gilt rail where the chandeliers couldn't quite reach. By eight the trail ran the whole length of the stair and nobody had asked me what it was for.

The Harvest Ball was the first dance I'd been allowed to stay for. Tom from the bakery found me by the punch bowl and asked me to waltz, and I said yes before I'd thought about my shoes. When we came round the far side of the floor I glanced back at the staircase and saw that the bottom three butterflies had come unstuck where the damp had got into the paste. They hung loose from the wallpaper, lifting a little every time someone opened the doors.

I kept the largest one. It was in my coat pocket that night, and it still is, folded soft at one wing from being checked on so often. Tom and I married the following spring. The Palais is flats now, and nobody remembers the stair, but I do, and I'd still rather have that one scrap of black card than any of the good photographs.