Colour tattoo of three pink butterflies and small blue flowers with yellow centres, linked by dark swirling lines, on a forearm.

Pink butterflies and blue flowers on a forearm

Forearm · Mixed · Photo

The tattoo shows three pink butterflies with dark outlines and darker spots, arranged in a vertical line with five small blue flowers that have yellow centres. Thin black swirling lines and clusters of dots connect the motifs and run down the forearm. The outlines are bold and the fills are soft and lightly shaded, with a plain pale background of skin, a silver bracelet at the wrist and a dark backdrop.

Forearm Butterfly Flower Forget-me-not Swirl Dot

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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 big top came down in October, and by November the field at Cold Harbour smelt of wet canvas and paraffin. You are the one who stays behind to count the tent pegs and sort the costumes into tea chests. Mr Aske, who ran the menagerie before the lions were sold, left you his old green coat and a tin of paints, with a note asking you to freshen the lettering on the wagons before the buyer comes on Friday. The only tin with any life left in it is the pink.

Keep reading

Pink was Lottie Fenn's colour. She flew from the high wire with silk wings stitched to her shoulders, and every poster in three counties showed her wings spread wide over the crowd. She died in March, quietly, in the caravan with the blue curtains, and nobody had the heart to take the wings down from their hooks. You still find feathers of thread on the floor when you sweep.

By dusk you have given up on the lettering and gone out to the water barrel, where forget-me-nots have crept up through the cracked concrete. Lottie used to water her ferns there and tell you the flowers were the only things on the lot that never asked to be paid. You pick a jam jar full, the small blue cups cold and wet on your fingers, and paint loops and dots along the wagon's side where the swirl of the calliope music used to run.

On Friday a man in a grey car walks slowly round the wagons and says nothing about the paint. You hand him the keys and keep the last silk wing folded in your coat pocket. Driving out, you look back at the field in the mirror, and there they are along the gate, a scatter of small blue flowers you never planted, opening in the thin light as if someone had only just gone inside.