Black mandala tattoo with a radial geometric pattern on the inner forearm near the wrist, with a hand resting at the right of the frame.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Black mandala on inner forearm

Geometric · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

A large black mandala sits on the inner forearm close to the wrist, built from a radiating central medallion, layered petal shapes and an outer scalloped ring. The linework is bold and solid with fine detail in the inner rings, and the tattoo is rendered in black ink only with no shading in grey. The composition is centred on the tattoo, with a hand, maroon nail polish, a grey knit fabric and a maroon jumper softly out of focus around it.

Geometric Forearm Mandala Flower Pattern Medallion

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 net comes off the Kittiwake in a heap that smells of diesel and cold brine, and Mags Lennox has already chalked a circle on the quay for you to work from. Start in the middle, she says, the way her mother taught her, and so you do, looping the first ring of tarred twine around a pin no thicker than your thumb. The gulls on the harbour wall watch you without interest. Behind you the boats knock against the pontoon, and somebody's radio is playing the shipping forecast to nobody.

Keep reading

By the second hour the centre has become a star. Eight petals open out from the pin, each one knotted tight enough to take a man's weight, and then the sixteen smaller loops that fill the gaps between them. Mags comes back from the fish market with two teas and stands over your shoulder without saying a word, which from her is praise. The floats go on last, a scalloped rim of cork and orange plastic, and when you sit back the whole thing lies on the stone like a dropped wheel of light.

The Kittiwake was not supposed to be the last boat in, but the weather held her out past Bass Rock and she came round on the afternoon tide with a tear as long as her keel. Mags looked at it, then at your circle, then at you. Take the torn panel to the far end, she said. Use the old pattern. You had not known there was an old pattern until that moment, but your fingers found it anyway, the way they find a familiar knot in the dark.

By dusk the crew are hauling the mended net up the slipway, and the rings sit in the cold light, each knot holding its place. You tie off the last loop and tuck the end under a float. Nobody thanks you. The tide is already turning, and the net, for once, is whole.