Close-up of a black geometric mandala tattoo with dotwork shading on the upper thigh of a person in black underwear and a grey knit crop top.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Black mandala tattoo on upper thigh

Geometric · Thigh · Black and grey · Photo

A large mandala design with a central flower of layered petals sits on the side of the upper thigh and hip, with concentric rings of scalloped and dotted detail. The linework is fine and dark, with stippled shading that gives the petals depth. The tattoo is black on a light skin tone against a plain pale wall, and the framing centres on the design with the person's hand resting nearby.

Geometric Dotwork Thigh Mandala Flower Petal Floral pattern

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

Dear Ines, the rain has finally stopped over the north dome, which means the hydroponic bays will want their second cull by Thursday, and I have been given the job of counting petals on the old lattice again. You will laugh. Sixty-one on the inner ring, exactly as in the drawing you sent up with the seed crate, though the grower in Bay Four swears the outer scallops have started to throw a twelfth point.

Keep reading

I went down to look for myself. The lattice is a flower in the way a seal is a flower, a pattern that somebody planted and the plant has obliged. Each ring is stippled with tiny pinched dots where the old growers cut the new shoots back, so from a step away it looks like shadow lying on stone. Nobody up here knows which fire it survived, only that it was carried across three moves in a tin marked with a number nobody can read anymore.

Tomas wants it cut out and sent to the archive as salvage. I told him the archive already has a copy, sketched on the back of a ration card by a woman whose name is gone, and that one drawing was enough to build this whole bay around. He said sentiment doesn't feed anybody. I said neither does a dead flower, and we left it standing.

This morning the twelfth point had opened, pale and sharp as a fingernail. I stood there longer than the shift allowed. Come and count it with me when the next ship docks. Bring pencils. The bay key is under the mat by the blue door, the one with the thread still tied through the ring.