Black ink drawing on white paper of a serene Buddha face framed by a mandala, a lotus and five moon phases, in a flash design style.

Buddha with lotus and moon phases drawing

Black and grey · Flash

A black ink drawing on white paper shows a serene, eyes-closed Buddha with a lotus flower in the hair and a third-eye dot, set within a radiating mandala. Below the lotus, five moon phases are drawn in a row, with the lower ones shaded in stippled and cross-hatched lines. The linework is fine and detailed, with shading in black and grey only, and the whole design is centred on the page.

Buddha Lotus Mandala Moon phase Flower

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Mrs Pell's dining room smelled of gravy and damp wool in the off-season, and by the second week of November Ruth had claimed the table nearest the window. She came down each evening after the last guest had gone up, laid out a sheet of cartridge paper, and uncapped the black pens in the order she always used, finest nib first. Mrs Pell allowed it on one condition, that nothing touched the cloth, so Ruth worked with a folded tea towel under her wrist.

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The drawing had started as a face. Ruth had sketched the closed-eyed head in pencil on the train from Lewes, then gone over it in ink until the lines stopped wobbling. Around it the mandala grew outward a petal at a time, each ring a small argument with the one before. Below the lotus she set the moons in a row, five of them. The first three she left pale and clean. The last two she darkened with stipple and cross-hatching until the paper felt warm under her palm.

On the Thursday, Mrs Pell's nephew Dennis came in from the harbour smelling of diesel and asked what all the fuss was about. He tilted his head at the Buddha, then at the moons. 'Looks like the sea at night,' he said. 'All those rings going out.' Ruth said the moons were meant to be read from the left, in order, and that the order was the point.

That night she finished the last hatching stroke by lamplight, blew on the ink, and looked through the window. Past the pier the real moon had gone thin, a fingernail over the water, and she realised she had drawn the one she couldn't see yet. She capped the pen, folded the tea towel, and left the sheet face up on the cloth to dry, a fact Mrs Pell would have to forgive.