Black and grey dotwork mandala tattoo with petal shapes on the upper back, just below the nape of the neck.

Dotwork mandala on upper back

Dotwork · Back · Black and grey · Photo

A black and grey tattoo of a radial mandala with a scalloped outer ring of petal shapes sits centrally on the upper back. Inside, bands of fine dots and curling line motifs form concentric rings around a small dotted centre. The photograph is taken from behind in black and white, with the subject's head and hair at the top edge and the skin tone softly shaded across the frame.

Dotwork Geometric Back Mandala Flower Dot Circle Petal

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The dots were the easy part. Ivo Brannick had carried the paint pot out to the marker posts for eleven days, and by the twelfth his hands had found the rhythm, a tap for each dot and a pause between rings. The grader idled behind him with its blade raised. The council had never asked for this, but three summers of glare had stripped the posts along the bend at kilometre 212, and a driver who couldn't see the verge was a driver who ended up in the ditch.

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Mrs Ansah watched from the roadhouse window with her arms folded. On the third morning she brought out a sheet of tracing paper gone soft at the folds, a flower drawn in pencil: twelve scalloped petals around a ring of tiny circles, a smaller ring inside that, and a single dot at the centre. 'My mother's kitchen tile,' she said. 'Start at the middle or it wanders.' He had started at the outside out of impatience, and it had wandered. He rubbed the wet paint off with his thumb and began again.

On the twelfth day he finished the last post as the sun cleared the ridge. Seen from the cab, the petals ran out from the bend in a ring that matched nothing on the map, yet it sat on the flat like the face of a clock. A road train horn sounded from the west and the driver leaned out, shouting that somebody had gone to a lot of trouble for a bend. Ivo wiped his hands on his overalls. 'Somebody had to mark the middle,' he said, and climbed back into the cab.