Black outlined butterfly tattoo with looping wings, black dots and a pink and grey body, sitting on the wrist.

Outlined butterfly with pink body on wrist

Fine line · Forearm · Mixed · Photo

A butterfly is drawn with thin, looping black outlines and small solid black dots on each wing, with two antennae extending upwards. The body is shaded grey with a pink stripe running along it. The tattoo sits on the wrist, photographed from a close angle against a blurred outdoor background.

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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 wire is still warm from the forge when Aunt Maud tells you to close the last loop, and you do it badly, the way you always do, so the left wing gapes like a mouth. She holds it up to the lamp and says nothing, which is worse than scolding. Beyond the kitchen window the forest at the edge of Hollin Bottom has gone the colour of wet slate, and the path into it is already silvering with the first frost.

Keep reading

Every autumn the village sends someone up the track with an offering for the Hollow Ash, a tree that rots faster than it should. Maud's wire butterflies go with them, pinned to the bark with a single dot of black pitch on each wing so the forest can see them. You have always thought this a childish custom. Tonight, with the pink ribbon Maud has wound round the body for luck, you carry the basket yourself and do not look back at the lit windows.

At the ash the bark is split and weeping. You tie the ribbon, you pin the wings, and the wire catches the last of the light and holds it. Something moves in the bracken, a small grey shape, and then the thing you took for a fox turns out to be the miller's dog, nosing for the bread you forgot. You laugh, and the sound goes out between the trunks and does not come back.

Walking home you find the butterfly you pinned the week before, still there, its black dots gone glossy with rain. Maud will ask whether you looked at it properly. You will say yes, and it will be the first true thing you have said to her all year.

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