Black and grey realistic butterfly tattoo with a soft drop shadow, sitting on the upper back near the shoulder.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Shaded butterfly on upper back

Realism · Back · Black and grey · Photo

A butterfly with outlined wings is shown in black and grey ink, with light and dark shading across the wing panels and a soft grey shadow beneath it that gives a three-dimensional effect. The wings are open and angled, with fine antennae rising from the body at the centre. The butterfly sits in the middle of the frame on smooth skin, with the edge of the shoulder blade area visible at the top left.

Realism Back Butterfly Wing Shadow

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

Anselm had painted the butterfly four times before the queen would look at it, and each time she said it looked pinned rather than alive. I ground the ochre and the soot for him in the north gallery of Veyrand, where the light came through the high glass and turned everything the colour of weak tea. I was only his second hand. Nobody asked a second hand what she thought.

Keep reading

On the fifth morning I saw that the trouble was not the wings. Every painting in the gallery sat flat against its wall, and flat things die quietly. My mother had told me, when I was small and the dye vats stank, that anything wanting to leave the ground must be tethered to it by its shadow. So I took the brush from Anselm's hand while he slept off the wine, and I laid a soft grey smudge beneath the open wings, pulled down and to the left, the way the afternoon sun would throw it across the marble steps.

When the queen came she stood close and said nothing for a long time. Then she asked who had done the shadow. Anselm opened his mouth to claim it, and I watched his face go the colour of his own ochre. I told her the truth, which was that the butterfly had needed something to stand on. She laughed, a short surprised sound, and had the panel hung above her bed before the noon bells rang.

Anselm never forgave me, and he was right not to. But I still pass that corridor on my way to the vats, and the little creature is always there, lifting off its grey floor, held down only by the dark it casts, as if one careless breath could send it through the glass and out over the harbour.