Colour traditional tattoo on an upper arm of a dotwork camping scene with mountains, pines and a tent, framed by red roses and a black butterfly.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Camping scene, butterfly and roses on upper arm

Traditional · Upper arm · Mixed · Photo

A large tattoo shows a circular scene of mountains, pine trees, a tent, a campfire and a moon, with stippled dotwork shading in the sky and ground. Below it, a black and grey butterfly whose wing pattern forms a skull shape sits between red roses with green leaves, all outlined in bold black lines. The photograph is taken close up and head-on, with the tattoo filling most of the frame.

Traditional Dotwork Upper arm Butterfly Rose Mountain Pine tree Tent Campfire Moon Skull Camping Forest

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dear Nell,

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The moon was a dinner plate tonight, and I stood at the taffrail trying to remember what the pines smell like up at Glen Affric. Mr Okonedo, the bosun, says we are four hundred miles off the Azores and the sea has no edges, which I think is a lie told to keep us from wandering. Three butterflies came aboard at Lisbon, lost, and one has taken to the galley lamp like a dog to a hearth.

You will laugh, but I have started carving a tent into the lid of my sea chest. Canvas, two poles, a little flap pinned open. Under it I have put a campfire no bigger than my thumbnail, and I have been stippling the sky with the point of a nail, one dot at a time, because Dad always said the night is only darkness until you look at it close. The carpenter's mate thinks I have gone soft. He may be right.

The old hands tell a story about the skull moth, the one with the pattern like a death's head on its back. They say it flies only when a sailor is about to go home, and that it lands on the wrong man's sleeve when he is going down. I told them that was nonsense, and Okonedo told me to mind my tongue, and then he asked me to hold the lantern while he checked the cargo lashings. I held it steady. That's all I can say about it.

I'll be off the Tagus in ten days, God willing, and I'll have a week of your fish pie before the next run. Keep the kettle on. Tell Dad the moth is still alive and so am I.

Your brother, Tom