Black and grey dotwork tattoo of a symmetrical floral mandala with lotus-like petals on the inner forearm.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Dotwork floral mandala on forearm

Dotwork · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

A symmetrical floral mandala with a central lotus-like bloom, layered petals and two smaller flowers at the edges. The petals are built from fine outlines filled with stippled dots that shade from dark to light. The design is in black and grey and sits centred across the forearm against a plain pale background.

Dotwork Botanical Forearm Mandala Lotus Flower Petal Leaves

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The rain had found its way under the awning by eleven, so Nell Harcourt moved the lotus plates to the dry end of the trestle one at a time, wiping each with the hem of her apron before setting it down. Nobody was buying in weather like this. The stallholders on either side had packed up their bric-a-brac and gone for tea, and the only sound was water drumming on the tarpaulin and running off the edge in a loose grey curtain.

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Each plate was a white earthenware circle, the size of a dinner plate, with a central bloom drawn in fine black lines and filled with thousands of dots. Nell had spent three winters learning to stipple. Her hand had cramped and her eyes had watered over the work, but she had learned to build each petal from the outside in, starting with the dark edges and letting the dots thin out toward the middle until the glaze itself showed through like light.

Old Ambrose Tully had taught her that, at a bench in the back of his shop, with a pen holder and a sewing needle. Shade it so the light has somewhere to go, he used to say, tapping the rim of her work with one blunt finger. She had thought he was talking about pottery. Later she understood he meant everything.

A man in a wet waxed jacket stopped at the trestle just before twelve and asked for the last one. He didn't haggle. He turned it under the grey light and said his wife would like it for the hall, where the window was too small for daylight. Nell wrapped it in newspaper and tissue, took his coins, and watched him go off up the hill with the plate held flat against his chest. Behind her, rain ran down the awning and beaded in every dot she had left on the empty table, each one catching the last of the day.