Black and grey traditional tattoo of a skull with butterfly wings on the back of a hand.

Skull and butterfly on the back of a hand

Traditional · Hand · Black and grey · Photo

A black and grey tattoo of a skull whose eye sockets form the upper wings of a butterfly, with the jaw and teeth forming the lower wings and two antennae rising above. The linework is bold and dark, with soft grey shading inside the eye sockets and along the wing edges. The photograph is taken straight on at the back of the hand, with the wrist at the top of the frame and the fingers at the bottom.

Traditional Hand Skull Butterfly Antennae Teeth

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 cook kept the lamp burning for the moth because the crew swore it had come aboard at Cadiz with the salt, and nobody wanted to be the one who snuffed the light it steered by. Nobody could say how it had got past the tarred netting. It sat on the bowsprit each morning with its wings folded flat, pale as a peeled egg, and by noon the upper wings had opened to show two hollow sockets that seemed to look back at you.

Keep reading

Mary Penhale, the carpenter's daughter who had signed on as cabin boy under her dead brother's name, was the only one who would look at it straight. Old Hob Asquith told her that a moth like that carried the names of the drowned in its lower wings, one tooth for each, and would not leave a ship until the last name was spoken aloud. Hob had been wrong about most things, so Mary asked the moth herself. It lifted off the rail, settled on the rope beside her, and stayed there until the bell.

The storm came off the Horn on the nineteenth night. Seas took the jolly boat and two men with it, and the captain ordered the lamp doused so the crew could sleep. Mary carried it down the ladder anyway, cupping the flame against the spray. Each time the mate read a name from the roll, the moth's lower wings clicked together, a dry sound like teeth on a spoon.

When the swell eased, the moth rose from the rail and circled the mainmast three times. On the third turn its upper wings were full of light, and the captain's name shone there in silver where the eyes had been. It flew west towards the Scillies and was gone. The lamp stayed lit on the mainmast all the way to Falmouth, and the two long antennae, Hob said, still pointed the way it had gone.