Colour tattoo of music staves, notes, butterflies and a red hibiscus running up a woman's side and back.

Music staves and hibiscus down the side of back

Botanical · Back · Mixed · Photo

A long tattoo runs up the side of a bare back, with ribbons of music staves carrying black notes and clefs. Butterflies, a red hibiscus, green leaves and fine black swirls sit among the staves, with a soft yellow and orange wash behind the upper butterfly. Black linework defines the design, and the colour is applied with gentle shading across the skin.

Botanical Back Ribs Music staff Music note Treble clef Butterfly Hibiscus Flower Leaves Swirl

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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

Sit closer, the cold gets into old bones before the story does. Brother Anselm was the only copyist at Saint Oda's who could make a stave bend like a river, and the abbot said so often enough that the others stopped listening. He did not care for praise. He cared for his ink, which he mixed himself from oak galls and a little honey, and for the ruled lines he drew before any note went down.

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In the June of that year a novice named Edwy brought him a pressed flower from the merchant's cart at the gate, a red hibiscus the carter swore had come from a country where the sun never sleeps. Anselm laid it in the margin of the chant book without a word. Later that week, with the shutter open for the heat, a pale butterfly drifted in and settled on the wet ink of the third stave. Edwy ran for the abbot. Anselm only said, 'Leave it. The page has been waiting for a visitor.'

The abbot wanted the sheet scraped. Anselm refused, and while the wings dried into the parchment he drew the staves around them, looping the ribbon from the butterfly down past the flower, twisting a treble clef at the foot like a tail, and scattering black notes the way the wind scatters seed. He drew the fine swirls last. When the book was finished, the brothers sang from it every Sunday, and the boys swore that when they reached the high passage the wings lifted a little off the page.

If you go to Saint Oda's today, ask for the cabinet by the north wall. The page is still there. The butterfly never quite dried, and the hibiscus has faded to the colour of weak tea. Mind the ink when you lean in. It is not as dry as it looks.