Black silhouette of a figure with red butterflies drifting from its head, tattooed across a person's upper back near the shoulder blade.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Silhouette releasing red butterflies on upper back

Back · Mixed · Photo

A solid black silhouette of a standing figure in a jacket sits low on the left side of the upper back, with a cloud of red butterflies spilling from its head and trailing up towards the neck. The shapes are bold and filled with flat colour, with no visible fine shading, and the red and black contrast strongly against the pale skin. The composition runs diagonally from the lower left figure up to the single larger butterfly near the top right.

Back Silhouette Figure Butterfly

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dear Nell, the Bramleys have gone heavy this year and Mr Ashdown has had us up ladders since five every morning, so forgive the smudged pencil. I meant to ring you on Sunday but the line at the post office was cut off again, so you're getting this instead, tucked in with the stamp you forgot to put on your last one.

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It's about Tom from the cider barn. He's been spending his dinner breaks behind the packing shed with a tin of red paint and a sheet of card he cut with a craft knife. On Sunday he finally showed me. The card was a man in a long dark coat, standing side on, and when he sprayed through it onto the whitewash there was a figure there, black as a fence post, with red coming out of its head in a cloud. He'd cut the butterflies too, dozens of them, and they climbed up the wall towards the eaves as if the man had been breathing them out all summer.

Ashdown came round the corner just as Tom was lifting the card off. He stood there with his hat in his hand for a long time. Then a flock of real red admirals lifted off the buddleia by the gate and drifted straight up over the roof, and nobody said a word. Ashdown just asked Tom how long a second one would take, and whether he could do one for the gate.

I've kept the offcut of card. It's in the biscuit tin with the twine and the spare secateurs. Come up on the last bus next Saturday and I'll show you where the figure sits, half hidden behind the pear tree where the afternoon sun catches it. Bring a jumper. The evenings are turning already, and the wasps have gone quiet in the drops.

Love, Ruth