Black and grey dotwork and fine line mandala tattoo on the side of the torso, with a radiating floral centre and stippled outer points.

Dotwork mandala on the side of the torso

Dotwork · Other · Black and grey · Photo

A symmetrical mandala covers the side of the torso, built from a central flower of layered petals surrounded by rings of fine lines, dots and radiating spokes. The outer points are filled with stippled dotwork that fades into soft grey shading, while the inner petals use crisp, solid linework. The tattoo is shown in black and grey against pale skin, with a leopard print fabric and white sheet in the background.

Dotwork Geometric Other Mandala Flower Petal Dot Line Ring

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dear Nell, the north rose at St Brannock's came down on Tuesday in a sack of sixty-one pieces, and Mr Pyle has given me the sorting because I am the only one in the parish who does not hum while she works. I have spread them over the vestry table like a card game with no rules. Every piece belongs to one of three rings: the outer points, then the thin spokes, then a band of clear pearls. At the very heart sits a flower of layered petals, each cut to meet the next as if they had been argued into place.

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The outer points are the strange part. Someone stippled them with hundreds of tiny grey specks, so that from the nave they go soft as breath on a window and the light never settles there. Mr Pyle says the old men called it cloud work and charged by the speck. I counted one petal's worth and gave up at three hundred and forty, sitting cross-legged on the vestry floor with my tea going cold beside me.

On Wednesday I found a scrap of paper folded small inside the lead came, in pencil, in a hand I don't know. It said only: Keep the middle true and the rest will forgive you. I asked Mr Pyle who might have written it, and he said probably the boy who swept the church in 1911, and I should not go looking for ghosts before dinner.

This morning I set the centre flower back into its cames myself. When the last petal clicked home, the whole rose seemed to lean toward the altar, and the grey specks caught the sun and went briefly silver. I stood there longer than I should have. Come up at Whitsun and see it, and bring your spectacles, because I have never seen anything so exact in my life.