Pencil outline of a butterfly on white paper, surrounded by green, teal and black ink splashes, as a possible tattoo design sketch.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Butterfly line drawing with green ink splashes

Colour · Flash

A pencil outline drawing of a butterfly with spread wings sits on white paper. Loose ink splashes in green, teal and black surround the sketch, with a few darker blots near the body. The composition is centred, with the butterfly at the top and the ink spread across the lower and side areas.

Butterfly Ink splash Sketch Outline

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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 Ruth, I'm writing this on the back of a motel receipt because the stationery ran out somewhere past Barstow, and because you'll want to know the butterfly got finished before the paper did. Mum's drawing is still on the desk, pencil lines gone soft from the damp. You were right about the ink. Green doesn't sit on paper the way you think it will. It runs to the edges and goes looking for the gaps.

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I spent most of Tuesday trying to stop it. Dad's old dropper bottles, the ones with the cracked caps, had been rolling about the glovebox since the Nevada line, and one of them chose the exact moment I hit the pothole outside Needles to escape. Teal, then black, then a splash that looked like a map of somewhere nobody has been. I nearly threw the lot in the bin. Then I remembered how she always said the mess was where the good bits came from, so I left the splashes where they fell.

The sketch sits at the top, wings spread as if it means to lift off the sheet and head south without us. I've decided the wings don't need colour. The green can do the work underneath, pooling round the body where the black blots are, soaking up the road dust and the heat. I'll send a photo once the scanner in Phoenix behaves.

Anyway, the paper's nearly full and so am I. Tell Dad the car is fine. Tell him the radio only picks up one station out here and it's the weather. Love, Jen.