Black fine line drawing of a butterfly with curved wings and a trailing antenna on a plain light grey background, shown as a tattoo design without any skin visible.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Fine line butterfly design

Fine line · Black and grey · Flash

A single black outline of a butterfly with two rounded wings and a slender, curling body or antenna trail. The linework is thin and flowing, with tapering strokes that vary in weight. The design is shown in black on a pale grey background with no colour and plenty of empty space around it.

Fine line Butterfly Insect Wing

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

Dear Marnie,

Keep reading

I have been meaning to write since Saturday, when you slipped out of the school hall before the raffle and nobody saw which way you went. The old gym still smelt of floor wax and oranges, and Mr Pryce was still by the trestle tables telling everyone their names were on a list he had mislaid in 1998.

You asked whether I still had the exercise book. I do. It lives at the bottom of the wardrobe under my old tie. Page forty-one is the one that matters: the butterfly you drew in biro during double maths, one unbroken stroke, the wing rising and then the body trailing off into a curl, like a question you were too proud to finish. I spent a whole term trying to copy it and never once got the tail to stop where yours did.

At the reunion Dennis Holt asked what I had done with my life, and I said I had kept lines straight for a living, which is true, since I survey roads for the council now. I didn't say that I still count fence posts in my sleep, or that I have never drawn a butterfly that didn't look as if it was about to leave.

So here is the thing I should have said at the bar. Your line stopped in the margin of page forty-one, and I think it has been waiting for someone to pick up the pen. Come to the allotment on Sunday. I'll bring the book and a biro, and you can finish it.

Yours, Jo