Pencil sketch of a butterfly with scattered five-pointed stars and dots trailing below it, shown as a tattoo design on plain paper with no body placement.

Butterfly with trailing stars pencil design

Black and grey · Flash

A pencil drawing of a butterfly in profile, with spotted wing cutouts and long curved antennae, set against a white background. The outlines are dark and crisp, with light pencil shading inside the wings, and the thin body and lower wing tails curve gracefully. Small five-pointed stars and tiny dots trail down and to the right of the butterfly, giving a sense of movement.

Butterfly Star Dot Wing Antennae

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

You have worked the night desk at Harlow Lane crossing long enough to know when a lorry driver is lying about his cargo, and this is not that. The sodium lamps hum over the empty lanes, and a woman in a green anorak is standing at your window holding a jam jar against her chest with both hands, as if the glass might decide to leave without her.

Keep reading

She has no passport, only a folded card, creased soft as cloth, with a pencil drawing on it: a butterfly in profile, its long tail curling like a question mark, and a scatter of small stars falling away behind it. Under the drawing she has written a single line in neat capitals, DELIVER TO THE OTHER SIDE, and a date that is forty years old. You should send her to the booth. Instead you slide the jar across the counter and unscrew the lid.

Nothing happens for a long moment. Then the butterfly lifts out on a breath of cold air, its spotted wings catching the lamplight, and it turns once above your head before drifting toward the barrier. Where it passes, tiny stars come loose and sift down onto the tarmac, pale and five-pointed, bright enough that the barrier guard, who has been asleep on his stool since midnight, sits up and asks who left the lights on.

You stamp the folded card with the crossing's ink, ADMITTED, and when you look up the woman has gone. On the counter, one star has landed on the ink pad and is slowly going out.