Black linework butterfly design with lace-like wing patterns, dotted trailing lines and a soft pink wash, drawn on paper as a flash design.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Lace-patterned butterfly design

Blackwork · Mixed · Flash

A butterfly drawn in black linework with wings filled by lace-like scalloped, hexagonal and swirled patterns. Fine dotted lines trail from the wing edges, and soft pink and grey washes sit within the wings and body. The butterfly is centred on a pale background, with the wings spread diagonally across the frame.

Blackwork Dotwork Butterfly Wing Lace pattern Dot Swirl

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

Hush now, and mind the bobbins, they bite. You'll hear the frames until the last lamp goes out on Hockley, and that's the sound your grandmother fell asleep to. She worked nights at Ashworth and Dyer, where a design was pinned to a card and the machine read it like a hymn.

Keep reading

The card that came down the stairs one winter was a butterfly, drawn in Indian ink by a draughtsman who had never once watched a butterfly fly. Wings of scallops and little honeycombs, a body like a keyhole, and from every wing edge a line hung with black beads, the way the spare pins dangled when a girl pulled the carriage too fast. Nobody had the heart to punch it out. Lily Brame, sixteen and with the steadiest hands on the floor, copied it by candlelight in pencil instead, one stitch for every dot.

The turn came in March. The frames stopped for a strike and the card stayed on the bench under the window. When the rain washed the glass clean, the pink wash had bled in the damp, and the lace shadows fell across the boards so the butterfly seemed to sit on the floor, lifting its wings to be counted.

She sewed it into her wedding veil, all beads and no ink, and went down the aisle the next spring with her wings spread wide. Walk down Hockley after dark and you can still see one pinned above the bakery, its dots trailing towards the gutter. Mind the bobbins now. Goodnight.