Black and grey dotwork tattoo of a serene Buddha-like face with a topknot, set in a symmetrical design on the forearm.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Dotwork Buddha face on a forearm

Dotwork · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

The tattoo shows a serene Buddha-like face with closed eyes, a small dot on the brow and a curled topknot above, with stylised partial face shapes arranged symmetrically around it. The shading is built entirely from stippled dots, giving soft tonal gradation across the features. The design is in black and grey, photographed on a forearm against a plain light sleeve.

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dear Nell, the head came up on the slipway this morning, tangled in a trawl net with half a crab and a rope of weed, and Mr Pryce wants it off the quay by Friday. I have spent the afternoon with a fine steel point and a jar of distilled water, not chiselling, because chisel marks would shout over the thing. Every mark has to be a dot. The sea has pitted the limestone so evenly that you can hardly tell where the stone ends and the damage begins, and I have come to think that is how it was meant to be seen, a face slowly being spoken to by weather.

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The topknot is the hardest part. It rises from the crown in a curl like a wave that has decided to hold still, and I am building it dot by dot, lighter at the tips and darker where the hair folds under. The brow carries a small round hollow, the only smooth thing left, and I have left it alone. On either side the carving breaks into wings of stone that might once have been other faces or might have been hands. I have not decided. I have decided only that the eyes stay closed, because whoever carved them did not want anyone looking back.

Old Tomas came down with his tea while I was working and said his grandfather pulled the same head up in 1947 and threw it straight back, because a face that calm was bad luck to keep aboard. I asked him why it had come back to us then. He just shrugged and said the sea gives things back when it has finished with them.

I finished the mouth at dusk. It looks almost as though it is about to say something ordinary, like the tide is turning. I will bring the photographs on Sunday. Love, Dad.

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