Black and white engraved drawing of a swallowtail butterfly with spread wings, shown as a possible tattoo design with no body placement.

Swallowtail butterfly line drawing

Black and grey · Flash

A butterfly with wings spread open, seen from above, with a segmented body and thin antennae at the centre. The wings are drawn with bold black stripes, hatched shading and scalloped edges, in a vintage engraved style. The image is a plain white background with no colour and no body part visible.

Butterfly Insect Wing Antennae

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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

The snow has sealed the lane to Hollin Cross since Tuesday, and the landlord's ledger has gone soft at the corners from being turned over by damp fingers. You are the only guest who has not complained. You sit by the kitchen range with the glass case open on your knees, tilting it so the candle catches the black bars on the wings of the swallowtail you pinned in June, the one you swore was the finest specimen on the Pennine slope.

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Mrs Ashdown brings tea without asking and sets it beside the case. She has seen the case before. 'Your mother wrote to us about a cabinet,' she says, 'the spring you were nine, when you wouldn't let the cat near the nettles.' You don't remember the letter, but you remember the nettles, and the swallowtails that came down to them in a cloud, yellow and black, before the frost took the last of the flowers.

Night comes early. The wind pushes at the shutters and the stove ticks. You count the pins, seven of them, then eight, because the eighth is in your hand and you can't recall setting it. Something brushes the glass from inside the case. When you lift the lid the pinned wing is lifting too, slow as a page turned by someone who has all the time in the world.

By morning the drifts have reached the sills. The case is empty, the pin is bright on the table, and on the window ledge a single swallowtail sits with its wings shut, black stripes folded like a closed book. You open the shutter. The air is white and still. You hold out your hand and wait, and it climbs onto your finger as though it has been waiting too.