Black and grey dotwork butterfly centred between two leafy vines, tattooed across the ribs and underbust area of a torso wearing a black lace bra.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Butterfly and leafy vines across the ribs

Botanical · Ribs · Black and grey · Photo

A dotwork butterfly with shaded wings sits at the centre of the image, with a fine black outline on the antennae and body. Leafy vines with botanical leaves extend outwards on both sides, with dotted and hatched shading on the foliage. The tattoo is in black and grey ink, photographed straight on against a pale background with the wearer's black lace bra at the top of the frame.

Botanical Dotwork Ribs Butterfly Leaves Vine Foliage Wing Antennae

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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 butterfly came in on the draught from the bread van on a wet Tuesday in September, and by the time Mr Ashdown had turned the sign to Closed it had settled on the brass scale pan as if it had paid for the privilege. You watched it open and close its wings on the counter between the packets of sweet pea and the dish of loose nails, each wing dotted and grey as the slate roofs of Hallam Cross after rain.

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All that autumn you had been drawing for the spring catalogue, bent over the board at the back of the shop with a fine nib and a bottle of Indian ink. Mr Ashdown wanted bold hatching on the foliage, the sort the printers could reproduce without fuss, but you had gone in with dots instead, a thousand tiny stipples that gathered thick at the edge of each leaf and thinned toward the light. He said nothing when he saw the proofs. He only tapped the page twice with one yellow fingernail and went to put the kettle on.

When you lifted the butterfly onto your finger it did not fly. It walked along your knuckle, slow and deliberate, as though taking your measurements, and then it spread its wings wide enough to cover the spot where your pulse was. Outside, the gutters ran over. You carried it through to the yard where the sweet peas had gone to seed on their canes, and set it down on a leaf already curling at the edges.

Mr Ashdown found you there at six, the lamp still burning in the shop behind him. He did not ask what you were doing. He pulled up a crate beside you and watched the light come over the wall. By the time the bread van rattled past, the butterfly had gone, but the vine on the catalogue cover had a new leaf in it, and Mr Ashdown has never once let anyone else touch that corner of the proof.