Black and grey dotwork and fine line floral mandala sleeve on an upper arm, with a rose at the shoulder.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Floral mandala sleeve on upper arm

Dotwork · Upper arm · Black and grey · Photo

The tattoo covers the upper arm and shoulder with a large central flower in a mandala style, surrounded by leaves, petals and a rose near the top. Dotwork shading gives the petals and leaves soft tonal depth, while fine outlines define the ornamental band of circles and scrollwork running down the lower arm. The design is entirely in black and grey ink against a dark background, with a white sleeveless top partly visible.

Dotwork Botanical Upper arm Flower Mandala Rose Leaves Petal Ornament Scrollwork Sleeve

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The fog has sat on the Skerry for three days, and by the third morning the lens has a bloom of salt across its rings that no amount of vinegar will shift. Mr Abernethy hands you the chamois without looking up from his ledger. 'Start at the centre,' he says. 'Always the centre. The rest follows.'

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So you start there, on your knees on the iron gallery, working outwards through the prisms: the small bull's-eye at the heart, then the petal rings of glass, each one cut so the light bends where it should. Under your cloth the brass shows through in curled lines, scrolled where the maker's hand went wandering. You think of the chart pinned in the store, the one his father drew, a flower of concentric circles with the bearings marked round its edge like the hours on a clock.

By noon the mist has thinned to a grey sleeve over the water. Abernethy climbs up beside you with two cups of tea, and he tells you the lamp was paid for by a woman in Leith whose husband went onto these rocks in 1871. She wanted the light to look like something a person could hold on to. He never calls it a rose, but you have seen how he touches the glass at the top, where the petals meet.

At dusk he lights the wick and the room fills with a warmth that hums. You step out onto the gallery as the beam begins its turn, and the first sweep throws a flower of white across the fog, opening over the waves for a heartbeat before it moves on. Somewhere out there a boat is searching for the one thing that stays put. You lift the cloth to the rail and wait for the next turn.