Black and white mirror photo of a shirtless man with a geometric blackwork sleeve on one arm and a mandala tattoo on the shoulder.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Blackwork sleeve and shoulder mandala

Blackwork · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

A black and white mirror selfie shows a muscular, shirtless torso with a white towel wrapped low around the hips, and the face is cropped out of frame. A dense black geometric sleeve covers one arm, a large circular mandala sits on the opposite shoulder, and a small figurative tattoo is on the ribs. The image is monochrome, with bold black linework and solid fills, and the subject fills most of the frame.

Blackwork Geometric Forearm Upper arm Shoulder Chest Ribs Mandala Geometric pattern Sleeve Figure

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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

The net-loft smelled of tar and wet cord, and the chalk line on the floor had gone grey in the damp. I was on my knees measuring a sheet of mesh when Mr Pell came up the stairs with a drawing rolled under his arm. He wanted the coil on the old hawser copied exactly, the one that had hung above the slipway since his father's day, before the harbour wall was rebuilt.

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I unrolled it on the bench. Someone had drawn the hawser from above, every turn of it, and between the turns sat rings of tight knots that didn't match anything I'd been taught. Hitches within hitches, spokes and circles, a pattern that seemed to turn when I stared at the pencil lines too long. Mr Pell tapped a small notch at the centre. 'That's where my grandmother marked the tide,' he said. 'Every ring is a day she waited on a boat.'

I laid the sheet against the drawing and found the mesh had been shifted by one. Nobody had noticed for seventy years because the sails never came down. I counted the rings aloud, twelve spokes, and then the eleventh was missing. Hidden in the tangle was a boat with a lamp in its bow. We marked the missing ring in red chalk and I pressed hard enough to dent the wood.

He paid me in cash and a bag of cockles, and I hung the corrected chart beside the slipway door. Next morning the chalk had washed off the stone, but the red ring stayed on the wood where the sun couldn't reach it. Some boats come home on the strength of one knot tied right.