Black and grey realism back tattoo of a woman wearing a lace mask, with roses and butterflies covering the full back.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Woman in a lace mask and roses across the back

Realism · Back · Black and grey · Photo

A large back piece shows a woman's face in profile wearing an ornate lace mask, with a winged butterfly motif above her shoulder. Two shaded roses sit beside her face and lower down, with clusters of small butterflies and floral shapes spreading across the lower back. The work uses fine stippling and smooth gradients in black and grey ink, with strong contrast and a soft, detailed finish.

Realism Back Woman Mask Lace Rose Butterfly Feather Floral Portrait

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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

Every spring the boats came in before the fog, and every spring Mags Trewin sewed a new mask for the lamplighters' ball. This year the lace would not lie flat. She pinned it to the table and it lifted at the edges like something breathing, and she swore under her breath the way her mother had taught her, so the gulls would not hear.

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The lace came from a Dutch widow who sold it by weight from a cart on the quay. Mags had paid her with three crab pots and a promise. The mask was meant to be black, a shade the widow called midnight, but the thread went grey under the lamp, the grey of a November sea, and Mags found she could not make it darker. Wherever the needle went in, a pale rose opened on the silk, and then another, until the whole mask was threaded with roses that nobody had planted.

On the night of the ball the harbour was thick with moths. They settled on the lanterns and the rigging, and when the dancers turned, they lifted off the sleeves in a soft grey cloud. Old Hal Pender, who had not danced since his wife was lost off the Skerries, took the hand of the girl in the mask and found her grip cold and certain. He did not ask whose face was behind the lace. He had learned that much from the sea.

When the lamps went out at midnight, the mask lay on the floor, and the roses on it had folded in on themselves like the petals of a wet flower. Mags picked it up. Beneath the last stitch was a small grey moth she had never sewn. She put the mask in the drawer with the crab pot receipts and never tried to dye the thread again.