Black and grey dotwork flash designs pinned to a white wall, including hummingbirds, a heart, a hamsa hand, a scorpion, a ribcage and an eye.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Dotwork flash of birds, hearts and hands on a wall

Dotwork · Black and grey · Flash

Tattoo flash drawings on translucent paper are pinned across a white wall, with a hummingbird, a swallow-like bird, a ribcage, a stippled heart, a hamsa hand, a scorpion, a deer and an open eye among them. The designs are built from fine stippled dots and fine line work, with shading created by dot density rather than solid fills. Everything is rendered in black ink and grey tones, and the sheets are arranged loosely with a poster partly visible at the top left.

Dotwork Hummingbird Bird Heart Hand Scorpion Deer Ribcage Eye Mandala Geometric Flash sheet

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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

Brother Anselm has taken the north cell again, the one with the leaking roof, because the light off the snow falls straight onto the skins there, and he says the dots must be counted in daylight or not at all. I told him the abbot will not thank us for the cost of the lamp oil. He said the abbot has never tried to stipple a heart the size of a thumbnail with a goose quill, and I had no answer to that.

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The bird is the one that gives us trouble. Tobias brought the sketch back from the coast, a small green thing that hangs in the air above a bell flower and does not seem to need its wings at all. Anselm says the wings must be built from dots no thicker than a grain of salt, and that the shadow under them has to be lighter than the shadow under the ribs of the old infirmary cow, which is the only other thing we have drawn from life this winter. The deer took three days and two spoiled skins. It stands with its head bowed to nothing, and when the sheet is turned to the window its legs go pale as breath.

The scorpion Tobias copied from a pattern book that came with the last shipment of ink, and he swears it is the only creature in the sheaf that never asked for a blessing. The hamsa hand we did with the sisters' help, since the design is theirs by rights, and Sister Hild counted every dot on the palm aloud in Latin until I wanted to throw the pot at her.

We pinned everything to the wall last night, the translucent skins one over another so the ribcage shows through the hummingbird and the heart sits in the middle of the deer. When the lamp went out the lines went grey, and the open eye at the top of the wall was the only thing left looking back at us. Anselm says that is the proof it works. I have decided not to argue.