Black and grey dotwork mandala tattoo with layered petals sitting behind a person's ear.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Dotwork mandala behind the ear

Dotwork · Other · Black and grey · Photo

A large mandala-style flower made of layered petals sits behind the ear, with the outer ring and petal edges outlined in bold black lines. The petals and centre are filled with fine stippled dots and soft grey shading that build depth and texture. The tattoo is shown in black and grey against the skin, with the ear and dark hair framing it in a close side-on crop.

Dotwork Botanical Other Mandala Flower Petal

Find an artist for this

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

Dougal Penhale had been scraping the rosette above Platform Four since Monday, and the old paint kept lifting in grey flakes like scabs. Every petal of the casting was pitted with thousands of tiny dimples, punched by hand so the enamel never sat flat. The works foreman at the time had clearly wanted it that way, and nobody in the district office could say why.

Keep reading

Mrs Ada Lusk brought him tea from the buffet in a chipped cup with a saucer for a lid. Her grandfather, she said, had cut the die for the rosette at the Wolverhampton foundry in 1884, working from a sketch of her great-grandmother's garden. When the company ordered a plainer pattern, he kept the original die wrapped in oilcloth under his bed for thirty years. "He said a station needs one thing that looks like it was made by somebody who cared," she said, and went back to her urn before he could answer.

The die turned up in a biscuit tin in the lamp room, beneath a bundle of signal rules. Dougal held it to the light and saw the petals drawn in pencil on the tin lid, with a note in a careful hand: Start at the centre. Dot it slow. He worked the next three evenings with a fine brass point and a torch clamped to the rail, stippling each petal until the dark rings settled into shadow.

On Friday the sun dropped low over the cutting and came through the rosette in a single gold line. The shadow of the centre fell across the timetable board like a small open eye. Dougal climbed down with the paint on his sleeves just as the 7.14 pulled out beneath it, and for once he did not look at his watch.