Colour traditional-style moth tattoo in teal, pink and red on the upper back of a person with blonde hair in a bun.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Moth tattoo on upper back

Traditional · Back · Colour · Photo

A person with blonde hair in a loose bun lies on a white bed, seen from behind. A large moth with symmetrical teal wings, pink and red panels and a green body sits between the shoulder blades and the neck. Bold dark outlines and flat, solid fills give it a classic tattoo look, and part of another tattoo is visible on the upper arm.

Traditional Back Moth Wing Blonde hair

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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 snow had sealed the Coldharbour road for nine days when the moth came up the cellar steps, drifting slow through the lamplight with wings the green of a bottle held to the window. Pa Hensley swore the damp had woken some dead thing. I kept the shutters closed and the fire built high, and still it went from beam to beam as though it had paid for the room.

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On the tenth night the guests were four: a drover's widow, two surveyors who argued about bridges, and a quiet man who drank his cider warm. The moth settled on the pewter jug between them. Its wings were panelled in pink and red and bordered in black ink as thick as a sailor's knot, and when one surveyor reached to swat it, the widow caught his wrist. 'Leave her be,' she said. 'She's come for the one who left the window open at Michaelmas.'

Nobody in the house claimed that window. I went down to the cold cellar with a candle to count the casks and found the outer door standing wide, snow drifted across the flags in a neat white fan. On the drift was a print, moth-shaped and pressed deep, as if someone had lain down there and risen again. I counted the casks twice. When I came back up, the widow's chair was empty and the fire had sunk to embers.

In the morning the road was ploughed and the surveyors set off down the valley, still arguing. The pewter jug stood empty on the table, and on its rim lay a single scale of teal dust, bright as fresh paint. I have wiped that table a hundred times since, and the dust is still there.