Colour realism tattoo of a pink lily with butterflies on a green and yellow wash background, on the upper arm.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Pink lily with butterflies on upper arm

Realism · Upper arm · Colour · Photo

A large, detailed pink lily with visible stamens and shaded petal veins fills the centre of the design. Soft, blended shading gives the petals a three-dimensional look, and faint butterflies sit among washes of green, yellow and pink behind the flower. The tattoo covers the upper arm and shoulder area.

Realism Botanical Upper arm Lily Flower Butterfly Petal Stamen

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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

Tuesday, 4.20am. The ovens in Haddow's Bakery have been ticking since three, and Dora has stood at the bench long enough that the dough under her palms feels like her own skin. Mr Haddow says you can tell a proved loaf by the way it gives back, like a held breath. I am not yet sure I believe him.

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The front window still carries the lily that Gran commissioned from a sign-writer in 1974, the year the shop opened. Pink petals, stamens dusted gold, and the little blue and yellow butterflies the painter insisted on, though Gran always said they were a cheat. This morning the glass is grey with condensation and the flower looks like it is breathing too. I have started pressing my thumb against the bottom corner where a butterfly has chipped, just to feel it there.

Mr Haddow came in at half three with a tin of paint and a brush worn to a point. "The sign is going," he said. "Not the lily. Only the lettering." He wanted to know if I would hold the ladder. I said yes before I had thought about the cold.

By five the first van is at the kerb and the sky over the car park has gone the colour of weak tea. We climb out together, me carrying the paint. Under the lily, in faint pencil, he has already marked a new line of gold, and beneath it, no bigger than a thumbnail, a butterfly waits for someone to finish it. I dip the brush. Behind us the first loaves are still warm in the oven, and the glass holds the morning light for the first time all week.