Black and grey dotwork butterfly tattoo with detailed wing veins spanning the upper back, with a second partial butterfly visible at the top right.

Large butterfly tattoo on upper back

Dotwork · Back · Black and grey · Photo

A large butterfly with outstretched wings covers much of the upper back, drawn in fine black outlines with stippled dotwork shading. The wings alternate between solid black fills and pale, lightly shaded panels, with veins and scalloped edges picked out in line. The image is shot at a close angle with a soft, dark background, and a partial second butterfly appears at the top right edge.

Dotwork Blackwork Back Butterfly Wing Antennae Insect

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

The glasshouse door sticks in August, so you put your shoulder to it the way your aunt taught you, because the orchid bench is still wet and something has found the gap under the sill. The walled garden at Hallam Court has been quiet since the gardener left, and the buddleia by the south wall is thick with bees that don't bother you. You are here to finish the catalogue, not to chase anything.

Keep reading

The large one came in on the third hot afternoon. Black as a scorched page across its upper wings, then pale panels like thin parchment where the light passes through, and edges scalloped like a lace cuff. You had read in the old ledger that its kind had not been logged in the valley since 1911. You net it against the lavender and feel the fine dust come off on your fingers, grey and soft, like the ash your aunt used to brush from the stove.

The pinning board waits in the potting shed beside the relaxing jar, the pins laid out in a row, the card labels written in her copperplate. You carry the net across the gravel and lift it to the light. The butterfly does not struggle. It opens, slowly, the whole span of it, and walks onto your knuckle with its antennae curling like two questions nobody has asked yet.

You take it to the high brick wall where the ivy is loudest and open the net. It sits for a long moment, wings barely moving, then lifts on the warm air and goes over the wall toward the orchard. Back in the shed you open the ledger and write the date, the time, the plain word Released, and under it, in pencil, the initials of the one person who would have wanted it pinned.