Small black fine line tattoo of a dragonfly with detailed wings on the upper back near the shoulder blade.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Fine line dragonfly on upper back

Fine line · Back · Black and grey · Photo

A small dragonfly is tattooed on pale skin near the shoulder blade, shown with its wings spread and body angled diagonally. The linework is very fine and uses dense hatching to suggest the translucent wings and segmented body. The tattoo is entirely black ink against the skin, with a soft, plain background and a hand partly visible at the top right.

Fine line Back Dragonfly Insect Wing

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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 Win, the dragonfly came back to the lock again this morning, the one with the long rust-coloured body that we saw the week before you left. Dad says it's the same one, though he says that about most things with wings. It sat on the gate post for an hour while I stood on the towpath pretending to fish, and every time the sun shifted it turned its head round to look at me as if I were the odd one.

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Ronnie Pell wanted to take it in a jam jar for the schoolmaster, who pays a penny a specimen. I told him he could have the pennies from the eel traps instead. The wings are the thing, Win. Held up against the sky they're like the panes in Mrs Hollis's conservatory, every vein so fine you'd need a magnifying glass to count them, and yet they hold the whole light of the afternoon. You can see the reeds through them. I didn't know a thing could be that thin and still be trying to get somewhere.

The council men come next month with their drawings for the new road, and the lock is to be filled in. Mother says it's a shame but progress is progress. I walked out to the gate this evening to say goodbye to the dragonfly, feeling foolish, and it was gone. In its place, on the warm wood, a dry brown skin had split down its back, the shape of it perfect and empty as a glove. I've put it in an envelope. It's the lightest thing I've ever posted you. Write soon and tell me Paris is nothing like the pictures.