A red and black butterfly tattoo with curling black swirls on the side of the torso, above a red waistband.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Red and black butterfly on the side of the torso

Ribs · Mixed · Photo

A butterfly with red-filled wings outlined in solid black sits on the side of the torso, with black linework forming curling tendrils and swirls around it. The wings have black vein and spot detailing over the red fill, and the bold outlines give a graphic, stylised look. The tattoo fills the centre of the frame against plain skin, with a red garment visible along the bottom edge.

Ribs Butterfly Wing Swirl Tendril

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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 lamplighter of Cobble Row had walked the same four miles every night for thirty-one years, and in all that time he had never once looked up. He looked at the wet stones, at the lamp glass he had to wipe, at the iron railings that curled along the canal like the tails of sleeping cats. Looking up was for people with nowhere to be.

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The butterfly came in the second week of November, when the fog sat so thick over the docks that the gas flames wore halos. It was red as a pillar box and edged in soot-black, and it settled on the lamp at the foot of Tanner's Bridge as if it had been posted there. He flapped his hat at it. It did not move. The next night it was there again, and the night after, and by Christmas the lamplighter had stopped carrying his hat at all.

Then came the night the fog went yellow and he lost the towpath. He stood on the bridge with his pole held out like a fool, unable to tell water from stone, and the butterfly lifted from the lamp and went ahead of him, its black veins catching the light. He followed it. Its trail of ink-dark swirls seemed to hang in the air where it had been, and he steered by them, step by step, until the ground was cobbles again under his boots.

After that he never lit the lamp at Tanner's Bridge. He told the council it had a fault. Every evening he walks past it, unlit, and every evening he finds a red wing pressed against the cold glass, waiting for him to come home.