Black dotwork and fine line tattoo of a circular mandala with a red polygon overlay on the upper arm of a bare-chested man.

Geometric circle and dotted lines on upper arm

Dotwork · Upper arm · Mixed · Photo

A black ink circular mandala with concentric rings and a central star sits on the upper arm, overlaid by a red geometric polygon. Vertical dotted and solid lines run up towards the shoulder, with arcs and small crosshair marks adding a technical, drawn feel. The composition is centred on the mandala, with the red ink providing the only colour against the skin and grey wall behind.

Dotwork Geometric Upper arm Mandala Circle Star Polygon Dot Line Arc

Find an artist for this

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

The surveyor's boy was told to count the dots and nothing else, so he counted them as the rope went up the slope from the chapel wall. Forty-one to the stone with the cross cut in it, thirty-eight to the sheep gate, and a dozen more where the ground went soft and the old men said the water ran under the road like a dog under a table. Mr Abney had a ruled book and a brass sight, and he drew each line as though the hill owed him one.

Keep reading

Nobody in Cold Hollin would say what the red lines were for. They were drawn in a different ink, madder red, and they went round the circle the shaft-men called the Wheel: rings inside rings, a star at the heart of it like a pin in a map. When the company wanted the seam under the chapel, Abney laid a five-sided frame of red over the Wheel and said the land was measured. Old Tamsin Rowe, who kept the lamp at the top of the engine house, said a measured thing is only a thing that has been told where to stop.

That winter the dotted lines started to move. The boy swore the marks on the chapel wall had shifted a finger's width overnight, and when he went up with the rope the count came out different: thirty-nine to the cross, thirty-nine to the gate. Abney did not write it down. He sat in the engine house with the book shut and listened to the water under the road until the lamp burned to nothing.

In spring they found the lowest drift flooded to the roof and nobody inside it. The company ruled a new line through the Wheel and the village went on counting. The boy still counts. He says the dots he cannot reach are the ones the hill has kept for itself, and he leaves them unmarked.