Close-up photo of a black ink tattoo of a butterfly built from ornamental swirls and dots on a person's arm.

Swirl butterfly tattoo on skin

Other · Black and grey · Photo

A black ink tattoo shows a butterfly formed from curling scrolls, tapered lines and small dots, with two thin antennae rising from the head. The linework is solid and even, with no shading, and the design fills an irregular area of pale skin. The photo is taken close up and straight on, with the tattoo centred in the frame.

Other Butterfly Swirl Scroll Dot Antennae

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Mr Albert Crane had taught penmanship at the Hebden Bridge Board School for thirty-one years, and he still could not get the boys to stop blotting. "A flourish is a breath," he told them, tapping his pen on the ink bottle. "Lift the nib before the line gives out."

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Ruth Ackroyd, the only girl who ever came early to his lessons, watched him finish a capital D one wet Tuesday in February and saw the tail of it lift off the page. It hung in the schoolroom air, black and curled, then folded itself into two thin feelers and a pair of wings made of pure scroll. She did not scream. She picked up the blotter and held it beneath the wings, and the butterfly settled there, drying slowly.

Crane wanted it back in the copybook. Ruth wanted to know where it had come from. They argued through the afternoon, and by four o'clock the ink dot that made its head had spread a little into the paper grain, the way ink does when it is trusting. Neither of them moved it.

The next morning the blotter was empty, but every copybook on the boys' desks had a single curl in its margin, lifting toward the window. Crane never blotted again. Ruth kept the dot at the top of the stairs, and said it was the only honest full stop in Yorkshire.