Colour tattoo of two blue butterflies with black outlines and grey smoke swirls and small stars, on a person's upper back near the shoulder blade.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Two blue butterflies on a shoulder blade

Back · Mixed · Photo

Two blue butterflies with black outlines sit on the upper back, one larger and in front, one smaller and set higher to the left. Grey smoke-like swirls and small four-point stars surround them, with soft shading that gives the wings some depth. Blue ink dominates with grey and black used for the outlines, shading and background swirls.

Back Butterfly Smoke Swirl Star Sparkle

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

The mist came down off Harrow Gap the week the salt cart broke its axle, and Maud Tennick stood at the cairn with a lantern, two goats and no notion how to get them home. Her brother had gone over the top at noon for the dye merchant's bolts. He had not come down.

Keep reading

Her grandmother had a saying about the pass: the smoke keeps its own road. Maud had thought it nonsense until the grey came up out of the gully in long curling ribbons, slow as cream in tea, with cold sparks winking in it like frost on a window. Where the ribbons thinned, two butterflies hung in the air, blue as a kingfisher's back and black-edged at the wings. The larger one turned and waited. The smaller one flew higher and settled on a rock to the left, then lifted again whenever she hesitated.

She followed them for the length of a psalm she half remembered. Each time the ground fell away, the smoke folded under her boots like a carpet laid for her. At the saddle the larger butterfly dipped once, low over a dark shape in the heather. Her brother sat against a boulder with one boot off and his ankle swollen, humming to keep himself awake. The goats had already wandered down the far side and were standing in the lane below the village as if they had arrived by appointment.

Maud never learned who had sent the butterflies. The woman at the inn said the pass belonged to the smoke, and the smoke lent its roads to anyone who left a little something at the cairn. Maud had left a boiled egg and a twist of salt. The next spring she went up with a fresh loaf and found only a thin blue flutter over the stones. She left the loaf anyway.