Full-colour realism tattoo of pink lilies and butterflies with swirling stems running down the centre of a person's back.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Lilies and butterflies across a back

Realism · Back · Colour · Photo

Pink lilies, orange, blue and teal butterflies and dark swirling stems climb in a diagonal line from the lower back to the shoulder blades. The flowers use soft shading and fine highlights, while the butterflies have crisp wing detail, and the dark grey linework fades into the stems. Vivid colour dominates against the bare skin, and the composition follows the natural curve of the spine.

Realism Botanical Back Lily Butterfly Swirl Stem Flower

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Sit yourselves down, the band is still tuning, and I have a story for anyone who can keep their feet still long enough to hear it. The summer I am thinking of, the Lantern Ballroom in Margate hung its iron pillars with pink paper lilies, because the Admiral's daughter had married a Frenchman and wanted the place to smell like a garden in Provence, even though the sea wind carried chip fat through every open door.

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Ned Ferris swept that floor. He was sixteen, had no money, and was in love with Ivy Marsh, who sold tickets from a booth shaped like a ship's wheel. He saved for a month and bought a paper box of butterflies from a dealer on the pier, orange and blue and teal, each one pinned to a card. On the last waltz of the season he opened the box in the shadow of the pillars, and the butterflies rose into the lamplight and settled on the paper stems, as if they had been waiting to be asked.

Old Mr Pellow, who kept the boiler, said butterflies brought bad luck into a dance hall, because they follow the dancers and never pay for their tea. He swept them out with the confetti. But Ivy caught one in her cupped hands before it reached the drain, and she said it was the first thing Ned had ever given her that could fly. They walked out onto the seafront with it between them, and nobody saw the rest of that night.

In the morning the paper lilies were gone from the pillars, but the iron was climbing with green stems and small red flowers that no florist on the coast could name. Ned and Ivy were married by Michaelmas. When people ask what became of the Lantern, I tell them it is still standing, and if you walk the pier at dusk you can see those pillars, every one of them with a lily blooming up its length.