Black and grey realism style tattoo of a butterfly, flower and swirling vines across the ankle and top of a foot.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Butterfly and flower vines on a foot

Botanical · Ankle · Black and grey · Photo

A butterfly sits above the ankle with a flower and curling vines running down over the top of the foot toward the toes. The butterfly wings and petals are shaded with soft greys and fine linework, with small highlights left in the skin. The design is shown in black and grey against a plain light background.

Botanical Realism Ankle Butterfly Flower Vine Swirl Foot

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 Lantern Ballroom in Margate has been playing the same foxtrot since eight, and the boards are thick with chalk from everyone's soles. You lean against the cloakroom hatch with a lemonade going warm, watching Dolly Pascoe try to teach the bandleader's nephew the quickstep. Under the glass of the trophy case, a swallowtail is pinned open with a brass needle, its wings dusted grey at the edges like an old photograph.

Keep reading

Mr Eddowes, who keeps the books and the keys, catches you looking. He says the case has been there since his father's day, a gift from a Mr Carrow who collected such things in Ceylon, and that the moth is worth more than the building. You ask whether anyone has ever wanted to take it home. He laughs, a short bark, and says the only thing that ever leaves this room is a dancer with a broken heart, and that he has swept up enough of those with the sawdust.

That night, after the last waltz, you go back for the key you left on the piano. The hall is dark except for the green exit sign. Ivy has crept in through the cracked pane above the fire door, and its tendrils curl down the wall like the scrollwork on a dance card. The case is unlocked, the needle loose, and you lift the wings out on your fingertips. They weigh nothing. You carry them past the sleeping doorman into the wet street and let the sea wind take them over the promenade rail.

On Monday Mr Eddowes finds the case empty and a single curl of ivy laid on the velvet where the wings had been. He does not call the police. He winds the gramophone and dances alone with the lights off, the way his father once taught him, and for once he does not count the steps.