Black and grey dotwork mandala tattoo with a lotus-like centre spanning the chest between the breasts, in a dotwork style.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Dotwork mandala tattoo across the chest

Dotwork · Chest · Black and grey · Photo

A symmetrical mandala with a central flower surrounded by layered petals, scrolls and teardrop shapes, spreading across the sternum and underbust area. The design is built from fine stippled dots and solid black fills, with dense shading that gives the petals depth and a soft gradient. Lace fabric is visible at the upper corners of the frame, and the ink is entirely black and grey.

Dotwork Botanical Chest Mandala Lotus Flower Ornament Petal Scroll

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Sit closer, the lot of you. The wind's come round to the east and it'll take the words off my mouth if you let it. You want to hear about Nell Parrish and the brass lamp? Then listen. Her father had the Mercy out of Eyemouth before the war took the boats, and he left her nothing but a sail bag and a tin of pins. She learned the net the way other girls learn their letters, one knot at a time, until she could tie a mesh with her eyes shut and talk about the price of coal the whole while.

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Her hands were the only thing in Eyemouth that never shook. When the herring failed in the spring of '29, the men came to her with their torn nets, and she mended every one for nothing, because she said a net wants a good turn more than a man wants a wage. Each night she sat by the stove with a pot of ink and a bone stylus and worked at the grey of the bay, one pinprick at a time, drawing the same flower over and over on a square of old canvas until the dots joined into petals and the petals folded back on themselves like a rose opening in the cold.

Then the March gale came in and took the Ardent and six men off the Carr rocks. Nell did not weep. She carried the canvas down to the slip, laid it on the wet stones where the tide would reach, and waited. When the sea went back out, the dots had bled into a dark star with a pale hollow at its heart, and nobody in Eyemouth ever again put to sea from that slip without touching the stone first.