A grid of nine black and white dragonfly tattoo designs with swirling, tribal-style wing patterns on a white background.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Nine black dragonfly tattoo designs

Black and grey · Flash

The image shows a grid of nine dragonfly designs drawn in solid black line and fill on a white background. Wings are decorated with swirls, scrolls and flowing tribal-style curves, while some designs have bold solid black wings and slender bodies. Each design sits separately in its own space, with no shading or colour.

Dragonfly Wing Swirl Insect

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

Dear Tom,

Keep reading

You'll laugh, but the dragonflies have come back to the cutting behind the goods yard, the big ones with wings like lace that Mr Pryce swore were gone for good after the drought. There were nine of them this morning, hanging over the cinder path as if someone had pinned them there, and every one had wings scrolled round at the edges like the ironwork on the old footbridge. I stood with my flask and counted them twice.

Pryce says they follow the water, and the water's come back into the culvert since the rain. He has never once in thirty years told me anything I didn't already know, so I hope he's right about this.

The 6.12 was late again, so I had time to sit on the bench by the signal box, and a dragonfly came down onto the lost property ledger I'd left open on the sill. It settled on the entry for the black umbrella as though it were reading. I didn't shoo it. Its wings were so fine I could see the timetable through them.

I've decided to keep that page. The ledger says the umbrella was claimed on Tuesday, but the margin now holds a dragonfly I drew in pencil, copying its scrolls. Pryce says that's against regulations. I told him the regulations never said anything about insects.

Write when you make port. Tell me if the sea has swirls like that, or if it's just grey all the way to Valparaiso.

Love, Nell