Black and white photo of a woman seen from behind, with three grey shaded butterfly tattoos on her upper back near the shoulder blade.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Three butterflies on the upper back

Back · Black and grey · Photo

A woman with her hair in a bun is photographed from behind against a draped grey backdrop, with one hand resting on her shoulder. Three butterflies sit on her upper back, the largest near the shoulder and two smaller ones below and to the side, drawn in fine outlines with grey shading. The image is black and white, so the ink appears as greys and the composition centres on the back and shoulder.

Back Forearm Butterfly

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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

Sit closer, the lamp is nearly dry and I won't waste the last of the oil on your fidgeting. You want the one about the three grey butterflies? The old word, mind, not moths, though nobody left alive could tell you the difference. Your great-great-grandmother saw the last live one drift over the Thames weir when she was a girl, a yellow scrap no bigger than a thumbprint, and she cried into her tea about it for a week.

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The three that sit on old Maren Dask's shoulder came from a woman called Ilse Corran, who inked above a shop in Margate under a board that said MENDING. They had no colour then, only soot cut with lamp oil, so everything she made came out the grey of harbour fog. She drew each wing with a needle finer than a hair. The largest was for her husband, who went down with the cable ship in a March gale and never came up. The middle one was for their daughter, who sat on the sea wall every evening that spring waiting for a boat that wasn't coming. The smallest she gave to herself, so she would always know which of the three she was.

The daughter kept the girl's wing and carried it inland when the sea took the town, and she was the one who gave the ink its keeping. Every generation since, someone has had the three of them traced onto skin again, from copies of copies, and the grey never quite fades because the soot was so stubborn.

Count them with me, child. One for the man in the cold water, one for the girl on the wall, one for the woman with the needle. Now go to bed before the lamp goes out and the moths come looking for it.