Hand-drawn black ink mandala with layered petals and fine dotted detail, drawn on white paper in a spiral sketchbook.

Black ink mandala design in a sketchbook

Geometric · Black and grey · Flash

A symmetrical mandala drawn in black ink on white paper, shown on a spiral sketchbook over a pale blue fabric. Layers of pointed petals, circles and diamond shapes radiate from a central rosette. The linework is fine and uniform, with hatching and stippled dots filling the petals, and the design fills most of the page.

Geometric Botanical Mandala Flower Petal Circle Rosette Dot

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The rain had been falling on the market at Harrowgate Cross since before the bells, and Mabel Quint, who sold thread and needles from a barrow under oilcloth, had stopped expecting it to let up. She counted her spools twice each morning, the way her mother had, and each morning the count came out the same: nine reels of black silk, one of white, and a tin of pins that rattled when the cart went past.

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On the third Thursday of the wet a stranger came under her awning with a sheet of paper rolled inside his coat. He asked for ink. She had none to sell, only the sooty stuff her cousin brewed from oak galls, and he said that would serve. He sat on an upturned crate and drew while the rain drummed the oilcloth, starting at the middle with a small ring and working outward, petal upon petal, each one cut with a little diamond at its tip, until the sheet was a flower the size of a cartwheel. He filled the petals with hatching so fine she could not see where one line ended. Then he dotted every hollow with a point of ink, slow and even, as though counting them.

When he finished, the rain had stopped, and the paper gave off a sheen like wet slate. He rolled it up and left it on her barrow with a coin for the ink. Mabel unrolled it only once, at dusk, and found that the outer ring of petals now sat in a faint circle of dew, though the paper had been dry all day. She pinned it flat beneath the tin of pins and went to bed.

The next morning the market was dry for the first time in a month, and Mabel's reels were all there, but the black silk had turned white at the ends, as if something had spun it out of the light.