Black and grey full back tattoo of a seated Buddha with chakra symbols, skulls, script banners and a dotwork halo, placed on the back.

Full back Buddha with chakras and skulls

Dotwork · Back · Black and grey · Photo

A seated Buddha figure fills the centre of a full back piece, with a dotwork halo above and skulls arranged along the sides. Chakra symbols sit over the torso, linked by dotted circles and framed by ribbons of script. The shading is smooth and realistic on the face and drapery, set against a dark background with fine detail throughout.

Dotwork Realism Geometric Back Buddha Skull Script Halo Lotus Mandala Dotted circle

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Take it to an artist as a reference. A good artist will make it yours rather than copy someone else's tattoo.

A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Sit down, sit, the kettle's still warm. You want the one about the crate with the quiet man inside, or the one about the cook who wouldn't leave it alone? They're the same story if you're patient enough to let the sea take its time.

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The crate came aboard at Calcutta in the hot season, lashed to the number three hatch of the Marigold Star. Inside was a bronze of a seated teacher, legs folded, hands resting in his lap, and a face so calm the stevedores crossed themselves going past it. Bosun Harry Quill nailed the lid down and said nothing. A fitter from Chittagong called Anwar painted skulls along the boards with a brush he'd stolen from the carpenter. When Quill asked what they were for, Anwar said they were for the dead who hadn't been dead long enough to leave.

Ruth Kessock, who ran the galley, lit a stub of candle each night and painted a small lotus on the crate for every stretch of sea we crossed. Seven of them, one for each place a man can feel the ocean move through him, she said. Off Socotra the monsoon hit us broadside and the crate came loose. Quill swore he'd lashed it twice. Six days later, in Liverpool, the men pried it open at Gladstone Dock and the bronze was green in patches but whole, eyes still lowered. Ruth had a sailor's grip on the seventh lotus, painted at the belly, and it had rubbed clean from the wood. Nobody could say which of us had carried it off, but every one of those men went ashore a little heavier than he'd come aboard.