Solid black tribal-style butterfly wings design on a plain white background, shown as a flash drawing with no body placement visible.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Tribal butterfly wings design

Blackwork · Black and grey · Flash

The image shows a symmetrical butterfly formed from sweeping, pointed black wings with a central body where the wings meet. The linework is bold and solid, with tapering flame-like shapes and thin cut-out lines inside the wings. It is presented in black on a plain white background with no shading or colour.

Blackwork Butterfly Wing Tribal Design

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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

By the third week of August the Bramley trees at Hollin Farm had given up on their leaves, and you were the one sent up the ladder to take out the dead wood before the wasps got into the windfalls. Your uncle Eli stood below with the bucket and told you the old tree on the west slope had been planted by his father, which he said as if it were a warning.

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The saw was heavy and the light came through the canopy in thin black blades. Halfway up, a butterfly settled on the cut end of a branch, its wings folded flat and then opening slowly, as if someone were unfolding a map of the county. The wings had sharp tips that flared like struck matches and a dark body where they met. You stopped sawing. It sat there in the sun while the shadows of the leaves crossed its wings and crossed them back.

When you came down, Eli asked if you'd finished, and you said not quite. He looked up at the branch, saw nothing, and shrugged. Some things, he said, only come to the people who are not in a hurry.

You went back up the next morning with an empty jam jar and a pencil, and drew the wings on the inside of the tack room cupboard door, the way the light had cut them. The apples came in heavy that year. You never did find out where the butterfly went.