Small colour tattoo of a red and blue butterfly with outstretched wings on the ankle, shown against a dark background.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Red and blue butterfly on an ankle

Ankle · Colour · Photo

A small butterfly with a red body and wings edged in blue, with blue markings on the upper wing tips and thin red antennae. The shading is soft and blended, with smooth gradients across the wings and a lighter highlight near the centre. The design sits alone in the middle of the frame on pale skin, with a dark background behind the leg.

Ankle Butterfly Wing Antennae

Find an artist for this

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 wall of Harrowgate Keep had been down so long that the nettles had learned its shape. Every May the old keeper's granddaughter, Nell Varley, climbed the scree to the gatehouse with a loaf wrapped in a cloth, because her grandmother said the castle's last lord had never paid for his bread and the debt still wanted settling.

Keep reading

Nobody had seen the lord's face, but the village knew his voice. He called from the top of the broken stair, asking for his blue cloak, which had burned in the siege along with his wife. Nell left the bread on the step and did not look up. One year she did. A butterfly sat on the stone, red as a coal in its body, its wings edged in a blue so bright it looked wet. It lifted, turned once above her hair, and settled on the cloth as though it had been waiting for the bread.

Her grandmother said the butterfly was the wife, come back to see whether the debt had been paid. Nell said butterflies did not eat bread. Her grandmother shrugged and told her to bring the cloth anyway.

Nell went up again the next May, and the year after. Each time the butterfly was waiting, and each time she left a crust and a single blue thread pulled from her sleeve. By the time she was grown the stair had fallen completely and the gatehouse was only a sill of moss. On the last morning she climbed there, the butterfly rose from the stone with a blue thread caught in its feet and flew out over the valley as if it had somewhere to be.