Black and grey swirling butterfly tattoo on a woman's shoulder and upper arm, with a purple garment visible at the edge of the frame.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Swirl butterfly tattoo on a shoulder

Shoulder · Black and grey · Photo

A woman's bare shoulder and upper arm, with the head and face cropped out of frame and a purple garment at the lower edge. The tattoo is a butterfly formed from ornate looping curls, scrolls and tendrils, drawn in fine dark outlines with soft grey shading that gives some depth. The design is in black and grey only and covers the shoulder and upper arm, with the wings sweeping down towards the arm.

Shoulder Upper arm Butterfly Swirl Scrollwork Tendril

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

Dear Nell,

Keep reading

The ovens were already roaring when I came in this morning, the window still black as tar, and Mr Okonedo had the first trays of bread out before I'd got my apron tied. He's been teaching me to pipe again. You'll laugh, because you always said my hands were made for shovelling flour, not for anything delicate. Yet there I was at four o'clock with a bag of choux and a cold marble slab, trying to make a curl that didn't snap.

The trick, he says, is to stop thinking of the line as a line. It is a breath. You let the nozzle travel, lift a little, let it fall back on itself, and the scroll comes out like the tail of a comet. By five I had a dozen tiny spirals cooling on greaseproof paper, and he rearranged them into a butterfly, two wings of looping tendrils with a fat little curl for a body. He dusted it with icing sugar and said it would last about as long as a summer, which is roughly how long anything beautiful lasts in a bakery.

Mrs Adeyemi came in at half six, the early shift from the bus depot, and bought it before the sun was properly up. She didn't eat it. She held it up to the window, where the sky was just beginning to grey, and said it looked as if it might lift off the paper if she sneezed. I told her that was rather the idea.

I've kept the last one for you. It's in the cool cupboard, wrapped in wax paper, and if you come by before the seven o'clock bus it might still be standing.

Love, Jo