Black ornamental blackwork tattoo of a mandala, flowers and paisley scrolls covering a forearm, with more tattooed linework on the hand and wrist beside it.

Blackwork floral mandala on a forearm

Blackwork · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

A forearm is covered in dense black ornamental linework, centred on a radial mandala near the elbow with flower heads, leaves, scrolls and a paisley-like panel running down towards the wrist. The lines are solid black with some dotted fill, and the design wraps around the arm, with further patterning visible on the hand and wrist of the other arm. The image is dim and moody, in greyscale, with a dark background and a black sleeve at the right.

Blackwork Forearm Hand Mandala Flower Paisley Leaves Scroll Swirl 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

Your grandmother's loom is still in the east scullery, Ysolde, and I have not let the damp get at it. The Queen's silversmith came up from the coast last week asking for the pattern you took with you, the one with the great rose at its heart, and I told him it was lost in the flood at Carrow. That was a lie, and I am sorry for it, but the pattern is in my keeping now and I mean to keep it.

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You will remember the winter we sat by the stove unpicking the old hangings, how you swore every scroll was a snail trying to escape its own shell. You were right about the snails. I have started tracing them again on the good linen, in the same black thread we used for mourning. Each curl turns inward and then turns out again, like a thought you cannot finish. The flowers come down from the centre in rings, one overlapping the next, until the whole cloth looks like a clock that has forgotten what time it is.

The last panel is the one I cannot settle. It runs from the middle of the cloth down towards the hem, a long leaf shape with a feathered edge, and at its foot I have put a small blossom with a dot for every petal. I tried to make it finish the way the rest finishes, and every time the thread stops itself. So I have left a gap at the bottom, a bare strip of cloth the width of a hand. Come home and fill it, if you can. I will save you the needle.