Two traditional tattoos of skull-marked moths on the back of a person's thighs, one in colour and one in black and grey, with an eye and a crescent moon above them.

Twin skull moths on the thighs

Traditional · Thigh · Mixed · Photo

Two matching moth tattoos sit on the backs of the thighs, each with a skull on the thorax and bold black outlines. The moth on the left is in colour, with red, orange and yellow wings above an eye motif, while the one on the right is in black and grey with a crescent moon and sprig above it. Solid fills and layered wing scales are shown against plain skin, with black underwear visible at the top of the frame.

Traditional Thigh Moth Skull Eye Crescent moon Leaves Wing

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

Tuesday, 3.40 a.m. Ward 7 is quiet apart from the drip pumps and Mr Okafor snoring like a bellows in bay two. The fire door was propped for the linen trolley and in came a moth, big as my palm, the colour of dry toast, with a skull on its back as neat as a sticker. A death's-head hawkmoth, Frank in the lab would say, blown up from Africa on the wind. I stood very still with the obs charts while it looped the lamp above the station.

Keep reading

Rita rang the bay phone at half eleven about her mother in bed nine. Mrs Lindqvist keeps asking for a sister who has been dead since 1971. Rita asked me, straight out, whether the moth meant anything. I said no, because that is what you say. She told me her mum used to keep a jar of the grey ones on the sill in Dunstable for luck, and then she asked if we could dim the lights. We did.

I got a jam jar from the sluice and a card lid. It took three tries. I carried it down the back stairs, past the lift that always groans, and out to the ambulance bay, where the lamp over the bins is yellow. I tipped it onto the brick. It sat a moment with its wings open, the pale marks catching the light, then rose over the car park and was gone.

Upstairs Mrs Lindqvist was asleep with one hand open on the blanket. Rita had gone for tea. I charted her obs, 97 per cent, pulse steady, and then, because nobody reads the notes at this hour, I added that the moth had gone home.