Traditional colour tattoo of a moth with eyespot wings above a red rose with a teal centre, shown on an upper arm in two side-by-side photos.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Moth and rose on an upper arm

Traditional · Upper arm · Colour · Photo

The tattoo shows a moth or butterfly with orange-and-black eyespot wings, placed above a large red rose with a pale teal centre and dark green leaves. The linework is bold and black, with flat solid fills and little shading. The image is a two-panel composition of the same tattoo, with the design filling most of the frame against a light background.

Traditional Upper arm Moth Butterfly Rose Flower Leaves

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 frost had got into the water trough again, and I was breaking the skin of ice with the heel of my boot when Dad called from the dairy that there was something on the lamp. I went in expecting a mouse. Instead there was a moth the size of my palm, wings held flat against the warm bulb, the fat orange rings on each wing looking back at me as if they had been awake all night.

Keep reading

"Hawk moth, or near enough," Dad said, not looking up from the churns. "Hatched out of the hay bales, I expect. Daft thing." Mum had left the last rose of the year in a jam jar on the windowsill, a deep red one from the bush by the back gate that had refused to give up since October. Its centre was a pale grey-green, like the sea under the pier at Whitby on a dull day. I thought the moth had come for the rose and not the lamp. Mum said that was nonsense, moths could not read.

I carried it out on a folded feed sack and set it on the gatepost where the rose hedge began. The cold would finish it by morning, I knew, but I wanted it facing the right way. Grandmother used to say the eyes on a moth's wings were there to frighten things off, so whatever came hunting would think it was being watched and go elsewhere. She said it the way she said most things, as if it had been settled long before any of us were born.

Next morning the gatepost was bare except for a dusting of frost and a single wing, dropped like a torn envelope. The rose in the jar had opened wider overnight, its petals browning at the edges. I put it on the table anyway. Nobody mentioned the moth, but I found I was glad of that wing on the post, keeping its rings open at the gate while the rest of the yard slept.