Black and grey mandala tattoo with petal-like layers centred on a person's chest, with surgical tape visible at the sides.

Black and grey mandala on the chest

Geometric · Chest · Black and grey · Photo

A dense black and grey mandala sits centred on bare skin, with a circular core, layered petals and scalloped outer segments. The linework is bold and outlined, and the fine dotted and stippled shading gives the petals depth. Light grey tones and a slight redness around the design sit against the pale skin, and strips of tape are visible at the edges of the frame.

Geometric Chest Mandala Lotus Flower Petal Circle

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The Greyling had been nine weeks out of the Downs when the chronometer stopped, and Mr Hollis, our second mate, sat cross-legged on the chart room floor with a pair of dividers and a stub of lamp-black, drawing circles on the planking as if the sea could be coaxed back into order by geometry alone.

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I was the one who had taught him that trick, years before, in Limehouse, where his mother kept a stall selling cheap paper rosettes for the Sunday fairs. She folded each from a single sheet and snipped petals into the edge, and every petal opened to the same width, so the whole thing bloomed like a lotus when you held it up to the gaslight. Hollis said it was the only honest thing he had ever seen made by hand.

On the ninth night the fog closed so thick we could not see the bowsprit. Hollis drew his rosette in soot on the binnacle lid: a core ring, then the layered petals, then the scalloped rings on the outside. He told the watch to steer for the centre of it. We laughed at him until the leadsman called out a sounding that matched the depth the chart promised over the Sand Ridge, and we understood he had been counting the rings all along.

We made the Hooghly with two fathoms under us and the soot drawing still on the binnacle, because the captain would not let anyone scrub it away. To this day I cannot look at a compass card without finding its centre first.