Black and grey realism tattoo of a rose above a shaded death's head hawk moth on a person's torso, with the top of a white t-shirt lifted beneath the chest.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Rose and death's head moth on the torso

Realism · Chest · Black and grey · Photo

A woman lifts the hem of a white t-shirt to show a black and grey tattoo on her torso. A shaded rose sits above a larger death's head hawk moth with detailed wing patterning and fine linework. The image is cropped at the chin and neck, and the tattoos are shown in soft, even light against a blurred indoor background.

Realism Chest Other Rose Moth Flower Insect

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

Sit down, love, you're letting the cold in. The ward at St Aldwyn's never really slept, and on the night the moth came in through the fire door I was pushing the drinks trolley, its left wheel squeaking like a lark with a grievance. Sister Agnes called it a bad omen. She was the sort who knew one when she saw it, and she saw it land on the sill of bay four, right beside the jam jar of roses sent to Mr Pell by a daughter he hadn't spoken to in nine years.

Keep reading

The skull on its back was pale as old piano keys, and the wings were dusted grey and black like a letter that had been folded and unfolded too many times. It hummed the way the oxygen pumps hummed, so for a while nobody on the ward could tell which was the machine and which was the moth. Mr Pell could tell. He lifted one finger off the blanket and said, quite clearly, that his Edith used to say the moth was only a dead man's coat looking for a body to keep warm.

Joan, the night nurse with the brisk hands, didn't believe a word of it, but she opened the window anyway because he asked her to, and because the air in there had gone thick enough to chew. The moth lifted off the sill as if it had been waiting for permission. Mr Pell closed his eyes and smiled at the ceiling the way people do when someone they loved has just walked into the room.

He was gone by six, the daughter in the car park by seven with her hair still wet from the rain. She took the jar of roses home with her. On the sill, where the moth had been, there was nothing but a faint dust of grey, and in the first thin light it looked exactly like a folded letter someone had left for the morning to open.