Graphite sketch of two lilies, a butterfly and swirling lines with the word Love in script, drawn as a tattoo design with no body placement shown.

Lilies, butterfly and Love script design

Botanical · Black and grey · Flash

A pencil sketch design showing two lily blooms, a small butterfly and flowing scroll lines, with the word Love written in cursive script on the left. The linework is soft and sketchy, with pencil shading that adds depth to the petals and stems. The design is in greys on a pale background and is arranged diagonally from the top right to the lower left.

Botanical Lettering Lily Butterfly Love Script Swirl Flower Sketch

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 narrowboat Patience came up the cut in the last week of June with a lily growing from a biscuit tin tied to her roof. Nobody on the towpath knew who had planted it. Tom Leary, who kept the lock at Shadwell Bend, said the flood had brought the tin down from somewhere upriver, where people still grew things just to look at them.

Keep reading

The bargewoman, Nell Harrow, had no time for flowers. She carried coal, then sand, then whatever paid, and she spoke to the lockkeeper only to ask for the gate. Still, each morning the bloom had opened a little wider, and each morning a pale butterfly sat on the rail beside it, its wings folded like a letter. When the water dropped in August she found a scrap of paper wedged under the tin. The writing was looped and careful, and it said only the one word, Love, followed by a curl like a tail.

She meant to leave the tin at Hadley Weir, where the water was deep and the gardeners were thick. But the boat would not swing round at the weir. Weed caught on the rudder in long scrolls, and the lily leaned toward the willows as if it had somewhere to be. Nell sat on the cabin step with her tea going cold and did not push it off.

In October the butterfly lifted from the rail and drifted over the water toward the far bank. Nell took a tin of cream paint from the locker and, very slowly, wrote the word on the side of the cabin in cursive letters, the way her mother had taught her to write her name. Then she kept the boat moored where the lily could drink.