Two photos of a black and grey mandala tattoo with dotwork shading on the lower back, shown close up and at a wider angle.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Black and grey mandala on the lower back

Dotwork · Back · Black and grey · Photo

A symmetrical mandala made of layered petals, concentric rings and a central circular motif sits on the lower back or flank. The design uses fine linework with dense stippled dotwork filling the petals and borders. The left photo shows the tattoo at a distance with a loose top and waistband in frame, and the right photo is a closer view of the same piece.

Dotwork Geometric Back Mandala Flower Petal Circle Dot Ornament

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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

Mind the step, it's loose, same as my husband's temper was loose on a Sunday. You want the story of the Pellow sisters' tablecloth, so sit where the window light falls, because that's the only place the dots show properly.

Keep reading

Nell and Ivy Pellow ran a lace stall at the Thursday market in Skelby Bridge. Their grandmother had left them a pattern folded inside a tobacco tin, a rosette drawn in ink, rings of tiny dots crowding every petal until nobody could say whether it was a flower or a clock face. Ivy pricked it out with a pin, one dot at a time, all through a winter when the coal ran low and they burned the old price lists to keep the kettle going.

When the cloth was finished, Nell counted the rings and found the pattern was wrong. Each ring carried one petal more than the last, so the count never came out even, and at the edge you arrived back at the first dot as if you'd only walked in a circle. Ivy said that was the point. Nell said that was a mistake. They argued over it until the market bell rang, and in the end they sewed a jet button from their mother's mourning coat into the centre, the only black thing in that house ever allowed to shine.

Every Thursday after, a woman in a grey coat stopped at the stall, looked at the cloth for a long while, and bought nothing. Nell never asked her name. She just lifted the cloth a little further each time, so the dots could keep going.