Back of a person with a full back tattoo of ornate black linework florals and mandala motifs, with a heart tattoo on the forearm.

Full back floral mandala linework tattoo

Blackwork · Back · Black and grey · Photo

The photograph shows a large back piece of ornate floral and mandala designs drawn in bold black outline, with lotus-like blooms, leaves and geometric four-petalled motifs. The linework is solid and even, and the design fills the back from the nape to the lower back, with a smaller heart and floral tattoo visible on the arms. The image is dark and moody, with a plain grey background that keeps the focus on the pattern.

Blackwork Botanical Back Forearm Upper arm Mandala Floral Lotus Leaves Geometric motif Heart Back piece Ornamental pattern

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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

Marisol's grandfather had cut the stencils for the island's block-printed cloth for forty years, and when his hands began to shake she took the knife from him without a word. The paper was brown and stiff with age. On it, a lotus opened inside a ring of four-petalled stars, and the stars had been cut so close to the lotus that the paper between them held only by threads.

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Every morning the boats came in from the ferry with orders. A dressmaker in the capital wanted the whole pattern for a wedding veil, and a hotel on the north coast wanted it for curtains. Marisol worked at the long table by the window, tapping the awl, counting petals under her breath. Her grandfather sat behind her and corrected her only when she was wrong, which was rarely enough to be irritating.

One afternoon a stranger from the mainland came asking for the original sheet, the one with the mistake. He said his mother had sent him, and that she remembered a star with a missing petal. The old man looked at the paper for a long time before answering. There had never been a mistake, he said, only a place where the knife had been allowed to wander. He pulled open a drawer and gave Marisol a second stencil, cut in the same hand, with one petal left whole in the centre of each star.

She held it up to the window. Through that uncut petal the ink would print white, a small bright hole in every flower. Why, she asked. Every pattern needs somewhere for the cloth to breathe, he said, and went back to his tea. Marisol laid the stencil on the table, listened to the rain begin on the tin roof, and picked up the knife.