Sheet of six solid black butterfly silhouettes in varied wing shapes on a white background, shown as tattoo flash designs.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Six butterfly silhouettes on a flash sheet

Black and grey · Flash

The sheet shows six solid black butterfly silhouettes arranged in a loose grid on a white background. Each butterfly has a different wing shape and pose, with some seen from above and others in side profile. The shapes are filled with flat black ink, with no shading, greys or outlines, and the spacing between them is even.

Butterfly Silhouette Flash sheet Wing

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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

Dear Nell, the rain hasn't let up since Tuesday, and the stallholders on Cutler Row have started calling it the Brolly Season, as if it were a proper festival with bunting. I'm writing from under the awning of Mrs Okafor's fabric stall, where I've been sheltering with a box of your mother's lace doilies that she insisted I bring to you. Don't let her post you any more of them.

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I found the cut-paper butterflies you asked about. There was a man selling them off a trestle table by the fish van, six of them pinned to a card like specimens, all black as a stove. Every one was a different shape: one folded over itself as if it had landed mid-thought, another turned side-on as though it had somewhere better to be. I bought the whole card for a pound, which he said was a robbery, and then wouldn't take the pound back when I tried to give him fifty pence more out of guilt.

The odd thing is that the rain stopped the moment I got home, and the card went straight onto the windowsill where the light comes in. By evening the shadows of the six of them had crept across the kitchen wall, and I swear the largest one, the one with the wings like a sail, had moved a good three inches toward the sink. I've left it there. You can have the card when you're back, if you can stand its company.

Write soon, and tell Tomasz the stall with the copper kettles has finally sold out. Everything else in this city is still soaking.