Black ink line drawing of the deity Ganesha seated on a lotus flower within a patterned mandala halo, shown as a tattoo design on plain paper.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Ganesha and lotus tattoo design

Botanical · Black and grey · Flash

The drawing shows an elephant-headed figure, Ganesha, with a crown and jewellery, seated above a large lotus with layered petals. A decorative mandala of petals and dotted rings frames the figure's head and upper body. The work uses even, uniform outlines with fine dotted detail and no shading, and the subject fills a tall, centred composition on a cream background.

Botanical Geometric Ganesha Elephant Lotus Mandala Flower Deity Crown Jewellery

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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 closer, the gas lamp only lights one face at a time, and I like to see who is listening. You want the story of the locked shutter on Sorrel Street? Everyone wants that one. Pour the tea before it goes cold, and do not tell the constable I said so.

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Mrs Adeyemi kept the chandler's shop on the corner, and for thirty years the shutter never rose on time. Her customers waited in the rain, cursing, and she smiled at them through the glass and said the road was not ready yet. Nobody argued. She had a way of standing that made men find something else to do. Then one March the bakery ovens failed and the bus stopped at the top of the hill, and a boy named Tobias Hale came running up the pavement with a wedding cake in his arms, late for the very hour it was due.

She did not lift the shutter. She took the cake, set it on the counter beside a small brass figure with an elephant's head seated on a lotus, and asked the boy to wait. Then she went to the back and came out with a candle, a bowl of water and a pot of oil that smelt of rain. She lit the candle and dipped two fingers in the water. Down the hill the depot lamps flickered on, one by one. By the time Tobias had the cake on its stand, the road was clear and the wedding party was still laughing at the church gate.

That is all there is to it, and no grand moral either. Some say the brass god did the work. Mrs Adeyemi only ever said that the one who clears the way does not mind who stands at the door, so long as someone knocks. Now drink your tea. The lamp is going out, and it is a long walk back to your own street.