Colour tattoo of a blue butterfly above pink and purple orchids with a green stem, placed on the shoulder and upper arm.

Butterfly and orchids on a shoulder

Botanical · Shoulder · Colour · Photo

A blue butterfly with soft gradient shading sits above a cluster of pink and purple orchid-like flowers on a green stem. The petals show soft edges, pale highlights and blended tones, with the butterfly wings shaded from deep blue to lighter teal. The tattoo is shown in close crop on the top of a light-skinned shoulder, with a red garment at the lower right.

Botanical Shoulder Butterfly Orchid Flower Stem

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

Sit closer, the rain's coming through the tin again and I'll not shout over it. You want to hear about the orchids on Nell Carrick's stall? Then you'll have the butterfly too, because the two came together, the way bad weather and good bread do.

Keep reading

Every Thursday in the wet months, Nell set out her pots under the bent awning at the back of the fruit hall in Saltergate. Pink ones, mauve ones, a few speckled with green where the petals met the stem, as if someone had pressed a thumb there to hold them in place. The rain ran off the awning in a rope, and Nell always said it was the only thing in that market that kept proper time.

The butterfly came on a Thursday in March, when nobody else was about. Its wings were dark blue at the edges and paler toward the middle, the colour of a kettle just before it sings. It would not settle on anything but the orchids. Nell said she'd sell it a pot if it paid. It sat there opening and closing its wings like a hand asking a question, until the tram bell rang on Canal Street and it lifted over the roofs and was gone.

She sold the lot that morning, for half what they were worth, and the customers never knew why she was smiling at an empty corner. The next Thursday she left one pot out in the rain for the butterfly, and when she came back at dusk it had gone, and the pot was full of water, and she never once charged for the water.