Close-up of a black mandala design covering the back of a hand, worn with several silver rings and green-grey nails, on a cream fur background.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Black mandala design on the back of a hand

Hand · Black and grey · Photo

A hand rests on a cream fur surface, showing a dense black mandala-style design across the back of the hand and wrist, with circular medallions, scrolling petals and dotted borders. The fine lines and solid black fills are crisp and even, and the design is the only ink in the frame. The silver rings and grey-green nails contrast with the dark pattern, and the soft background keeps the focus on the hand.

Hand Mandala Henna Paisley Floral pattern Ring Hand

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 snow had already shut the lower road when Dalchand came stumbling into the inn at Sarkhan Gap, holding his hands out in front of him as if they were full of water. Across the back of each one, from knuckle to wrist, ran a pattern in grey ash paste: dotted borders, scrolled petals and round medallions, all as neat as a stitched hem. Old Rabia took his wrists in her hands and turned them to the lamp.

Keep reading

"Shirin at the Tarn hut," he said, before she could ask. "She draws on everyone who crosses. Says the wind reads the dots and counts you as someone who has paid the road." Rabia knew the girl's work. Shirin had first drawn the big medallion the winter her father went under a drift, and every ring of dots since was a season the mountain had been given. Rabia counted the rings on the boy's left hand. There were eleven, and the road only ever took ten.

Dalchand had crossed the pass twice before, both times in his father's place, and the mountain had kept the tally both times. Rabia fetched a cloth and a bowl of warm water. She did not wipe his skin. She wet her thumb in the ash and began drawing the same petals on the lintel above the door, slow and careful, until the wood wore the pattern the way a wall wears a name.

"Now the wind has its eleven," she said, "and it will find this house already paid. Sleep. The mules go down at first light, and you go with them, lighter by one winter."