Colour realism tattoo of a purple and black butterfly resting on a pink lily with green leaves, on the upper back.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Purple butterfly on a pink lily

Realism · Back · Colour · Photo

A purple and black butterfly with white spots sits on a large pink lily with visible stamens and green leaves behind it. The wings and petals are rendered with soft shading and smooth gradients that give the piece a three-dimensional look. Vivid pink, violet, blue and green ink dominate the composition, which is framed by skin on the edges of the photograph.

Realism Back Butterfly Lily Flower Leaves Stamen

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Every morning in July the Pennick glasshouse smelled of cut stems and hot iron, and every morning Nell checked the lilies before her father was up. The big pink bloom by the north vent had opened overnight, its stamens heavy with orange dust, and a purple butterfly was already on it, opening and closing its wings like someone reading a letter twice.

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Her father called it a nuisance. Butterflies got into the pollen and marked the petals, and the wholesaler in Spalding would knock a penny off every crate. So he set a jar of sugar water by the door and told her to shoo the thing out before the van came. Nell never did. She sat on an upturned crate with the radio turned low and watched the wings go from violet to black and back as the sun moved across the glass, counting the white spots on the forewings the way other girls counted sheep.

The van came on the Thursday. Her father loaded forty stems, the north-vent lily among them, and Nell rode with him to the market with her palm flat against the cardboard as though she could keep the flower still. Under the strip lights at the stall the lily opened fully. The butterfly was not on it. She found it later, lifting from the crate lid and drifting out through the open van door into the grey sky over the car park, a small bright thing the glasshouse had only ever been keeping warm for it.