Colourful neo-traditional tattoo of a woman's face with a butterfly covering her eyes, placed on the forearm.

Butterfly over a woman's face on forearm

Neo-trad · Forearm · Mixed · Photo

A shaded black and grey portrait of a woman with her hair swept back in a bun covers the forearm, with a bright butterfly across her eyes. The butterfly is filled with soft gradients of orange, pink, teal and red, while the face is rendered in smooth grey shading. A band of red and teal zigzag pattern sits beneath the chin, framing the design at the base of the composition.

Neo-trad Realism Forearm Woman Portrait Butterfly Hair bun

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Mr Pell had the cabinet open on the trestle when the constable came in, and he did not look up from the drawer of Lepidoptera. "Mind the Painted Lady," he said. "She's the only one I haven't tagged, and I'll not have her lost to a boot."

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The constable had come about the pins. Eleven specimens had gone from the case in the east gallery, and nobody had forced the lock. The only sign of anything was a smear of orange dust on the sill and a few flecks of teal on the green baize where the Heliconius had lain.

Pell carried the lamp to the window and held it to the dust. "Whoever it was took the butterflies and left the labels," he said, "which tells you they could read but did not care what the things were called." He turned one of the cards over. On the back, in soft pencil, someone had drawn a woman's face with a wing across her eyes, her hair drawn back tight into a bun, and below her chin a row of small red and teal points, like a collar.

"That's the Hartley girl," said the constable. "She sat for the artist in the spring and never came back for the portrait."

Pell set the lamp down slowly on the trestle. "Then we know where the wings went," he said, and he went to fetch his pins.