Pencil and ink drawing of an elephant head framed by black dotwork mandalas with red accents, shown as a tattoo design on paper.

Elephant and mandala tattoo design

Dotwork · Mixed · Flash

A detailed drawing on paper of an elephant head in profile, with a jewelled forehead ornament and a beaded chain hanging below the tusk. Two large mandalas, one behind the head and one at the lower left, are built from petals, dots and star shapes. The elephant is drawn in fine lines with stippled shading, and the upper mandala has small red accents against the black ink.

Dotwork Geometric Elephant Mandala Lotus Tusk Bead Jewellery Flower Star

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Mrs Ruth Penhallow kept the galley of the Constance Mary clean enough to eat from the floor, and she did not care for passengers who asked for things. So when the boy came down the ladder with a wooden elephant under one arm, she told him to set it on the flour sacks and mind the lamp.

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The elephant was carved from pale wood, with a forehead ornament like a small lace doily and a chain of beads hanging from its tusk. The boy said his uncle had traded it in a port where the houses were painted every colour and the flowers opened in circles. Ruth said flowers did not open in circles. Then she saw the petals cut into the wood, curling round the beast's head like a second sun, and she was quiet for a while.

That night the stores ran low. The bread went green and the salt pork turned to grey string. Ruth carried the elephant up to the rail, turned it so the mandala faced the sea, and sang the one song her mother had sung over the copper pans. In the morning the lentils were sweet, and there were eleven hundred of them in the sack, which was not possible, and the cook did not ask how.

When the ship docked at Falmouth, the boy asked what he owed her. Ruth told him to take the beads off the tusk before the customs men saw them, because a thing that feeds a crew is a thing people want to count. He did not take them off. He hung the elephant on the galley hook, where it still swings when the ship rolls, and the crew say the stew has never once caught.