Black blackwork mandala tattoo on a forearm, with the word allow in script above a solid black band.

Blackwork mandala with script on forearm

Blackwork · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

The tattoo shows an ornamental mandala with floral and lace-like motifs, scalloped petals, leaf shapes and teardrop details, set below a solid black band. The word allow is written in a thin, single-line script above the band. The linework is crisp and the fills are solid black ink, with no grey shading, and the design is shown head-on against a white textured cloth.

Blackwork Forearm Mandala Floral Lace pattern Leaves Teardrop Script Word

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

Mind the coil, and sit where the tar won't reach your good trousers. No, the stool by the lamp. There. You asked how Nan Pennick mended the Morwenna's nets the winter the gale took her boom, and I'll tell you, though you'll want to be sure I'm not making it prettier than it was.

Keep reading

She sat on the quay wall with her knees apart and a shuttle of tarred twine in her lap, working the mesh the way her mother had taught her. Loop, knot, loop. Nobody asked her to make lace. The men called it fancy work and laughed. But the pattern she put into the mending, the scallops and the little leaves fanning down to the drops, was the shape of the frost on the chapel window. Round and round it went, black twine on grey, until the patch looked like something a bride would want on her sleeve.

The skipper, Tobias Hale, came down the steps the morning the tide turned and said the net was too fine to fish with. Too much work in it. Nan told him the sea didn't read patterns, it only read knots, and she had tied every one. He said nothing. Then he lifted the net and found the word she had worked into the border band, small and plain, where only a man bending to check the lines would see it. Allow. He read it twice, and he took her out.

They came in on the evening tide with eleven crates and every knot holding. Tobias never called her work fancy again. Each spring after that he came down the steps with a torn corner over his arm and said, 'Nan, will you allow me one more patch?' And she always did.