Black and grey dotwork mandala tattoo with layered petals and a central rosette, placed centrally on the upper back of a person seen from behind.

Dotwork mandala tattoo on upper back

Dotwork · Back · Black and grey · Photo

A large mandala design sits centrally on the upper back, built from layered black petals, concentric rings and a central rosette. Fine stippled dots fill the background shapes and the outer ornaments, while solid black outlines and grey shading give the motif depth. The design is framed by dark hair and a plain background, and the pale skin makes the black ink stand out.

Dotwork Geometric Back Mandala Flower Petal Rosette Dot

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Ruth had been up since four, walking the rows of Coldharbour orchard with a tally board, and by half six her boots were soaked through with dew and her fingers sticky with windfall juice. The Bramleys were late this year. Her father would have blamed the wet June, then the dry August, then the wasps, and he would have been right about all of them.

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She noticed the pattern only when she climbed the stepladder at the old tree in the middle of the field. Below her the fallen fruit lay in rings, a dark crown of split apples spreading from the trunk, each ring edged again by the small hard drops the wind had shaken loose, pale green and freckled brown. From the ground it looked like nothing. From the ladder it looked like a rosette, the kind her mother used to stitch on the corners of tablecloths.

She got down, fetched the ledger from the pickup, and sat on an upturned crate with the sun climbing hot on her neck. She drew it in pencil, dot by dot, marking each apple with a tiny cross and counting under her breath. Four hundred and twelve. The wasps found the sweet centre and she let them have it.

When she finished she tore the page out and folded it into her shirt pocket. The pickers would be down the lane by nine with their barrows and their radios, and they would rake the whole pattern into sacks without a second look. Ruth pressed the flat of her thumb over the folded paper and felt the small ridges of the pencil through the cotton, and she went to find her coffee.