Black ink drawing of a butterfly made of swirling tribal-style curls, with a diagonal trail of small spirals and squares, drawn on plain paper as a tattoo design.

Swirl butterfly with dotted trail design

Black and grey · Flash

A pen drawing of a butterfly with a curled body, two antennae and wings filled with spiral and square motifs. A trail of diminishing spirals, squares and dots runs diagonally down from the lower wing to the bottom right of the sheet. The image is in black ink on a pale background, with bold outlines and simple hatched detail in the wings.

Butterfly Swirl Spiral Dot Trail 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

I was up the ladder at the launderette on Vale Road at half one in the morning, lettering the front window in gold leaf for a new owner who wanted SUDS & SONS and nothing fussy. The rain had stopped an hour before. The street lamps buzzed. Something bumped against the glass beside my brush, a dark-winged thing with curled feelers, and it settled on the wet size I'd just laid down for the ampersand.

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I didn't shoo it. It walked along the sill, lifted, and dropped onto the pavement, leaving a line of tiny curls and squares pressed into the tacky gold where its feet had touched. I tested one with my knuckle, but the size wouldn't take a print. By the time I got down the ladder the marks had set, and I stood on the kerb with the paint tin under my arm while the trail ran off down the gutter. The spirals got smaller each time, the squares thinned to stitches, then came dots, then nothing I could swear to.

Mr Okafor, who owned the place, came out in his dressing gown at two to see why I hadn't gone home. I told him about the butterfly. He studied the window for a long time, then the gutter. "Leave it as it is," he said. "Cheaper than a new pane."

So the sign still reads SUDS & SONS, with a small trail of spirals running off the foot of the O. Every night on my way home I walk past it and look for the last dot, and I have never found it. I have stopped trying to find it and started waiting for it instead.