Small black and grey fine line butterfly tattoo with swirling lines and dots on the back of a hand, near the thumb.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Butterfly and swirl on the back of a hand

Fine line · Hand · Black and grey · Photo

A small butterfly sits on the back of a hand, with its wings partly shaded in grey and its body in solid black. Thin curling lines flow out from the butterfly on both sides, with small dots scattered along them. The composition is centred on the tattoo, which is shown against a grey surface with a watch on the wrist and rings on a finger.

Fine line Hand Butterfly Swirl Dot Hand

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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

Dear Tomasz, the wind has been off the estuary all week and the Dreamland sign has lost its D, so the lads now call it Ream-land, which Mr Pell says is more honest. We pitched on the old gasworks field in Hartlepool on Monday. Your mother would have hated the mud, but she'd have loved the lights on the waltzer, each bulb threaded on wire like a string of wet pearls.

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The thing I meant to tell you is about Ada. She runs the hook-a-duck and paints signs for Pell in the winters, and last Thursday she came to the wagon with a sheet of tracing paper showing a butterfly with curls trailing out either side, as if someone had blown smoke across the page. She wanted it inked on the back of her hand, a small thing she could keep through the season. I told her a butterfly needs a flower, not a swirl, and she said the swirl was the flower, it was the bit that carried the thing away.

I did it on the Saturday between the matinee and the evening rush, in the back of the caravan with the kettle ticking. Black for the body, a grey wash for the wings so they looked lifted off the skin. I stippled the little dots last, the ones that trail off the curls like sparks off a catherine wheel, and she counted them out loud until she got bored at eleven.

She showed it to the whole ground before the lights came on. Pell called it our best advert. I thought it looked like something that had got loose and decided to stay a while. Come up for the Bank Holiday if you can. Bring the good pliers.

Love, Nell