Black line drawing of a circular geometric design made of overlapping circles, arcs, spokes and small dots, with no shading.

Circular geometric line design

Geometric · Black and grey · Flash

A black line drawing of a circle filled with overlapping arcs, circles and semicircles, joined by thin straight spokes and dotted with small filled and hollow points. The linework is uniform and clean, with no shading or fill, and the composition is symmetrical around a central open space. It reads as a design sheet rather than a photograph of skin.

Geometric Circle Arc Overlapping circles Dot Mandala Line drawing

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Brother Anselm sets you to copy the ring from the cracked tablet in the lower cloister, because nobody else at Hollin Abbey can read its marks and you have the steadiest hand. You rule the circle with a cord and a nail, as he taught you, yet the arcs refuse to close the way the drawing says they should. Each disc sits inside another, and the spokes run from hollow points to dots on the far side of the wheel, as though the stone wanted them to meet there.

Keep reading

By the third week the work has taken over the scriptorium. Candles gutter, the ink thickens in its horn, and you notice the lines you have copied are the lines you dreamt of in the night, the same small black points pressing like eyes. Anselm does not look up from his psalter. "Copy what is there, not what you think is meant," he says. You keep your pen steady and do not tell him the empty centre has begun to look like a door.

On the feast of Saint Brannoc the bell rings, the cloister gate stands open, and you walk into the orchard with the vellum rolled under your arm. The copy is complete except for one hairline spoke you could not place, running from a rim point toward the middle. You lay the sheet on the frosted grass and trace the line with a fingertip, and the frost melts along it in a thin bright thread.

When you return, the tablet in the lower cloister is blank, and Anselm, who never once asked what the marks said, holds out your pen as if he has been waiting for you to finish reading.