Black and grey geometric mandala tattoo with fine linework and dotwork detail on the forearm.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Geometric mandala tattoo on a forearm

Geometric · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

A circular mandala sits at the centre of the image, with a star-like motif inside a ring and a scalloped outer border of fine petal shapes. Small diamond shapes mark the outer points. The lines are crisp and the shading is built up from stippled dots, shown in black ink on pale skin in a close crop.

Geometric Dotwork Fine line Forearm Mandala Circle Star Diamond Petal Pattern

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 stores never balanced the way the mate wanted, so I drew the sums instead. Forty-eight petals for forty-eight days out of Liverpool, each one a loaf promised to the forecastle, each diamond a tin of condensed milk I had hidden behind the flour sacks so the boys would not finish it before the Azores. I pinned the paper to the galley bulkhead with two brass tacks and sat beneath it with my tea going cold.

Keep reading

The sea got up on the fourth night out. Pots slid along the range rail and the lamp swung in long arcs that threw my drawing across the wall like a wheel turning backwards. I could not sleep for the noise, so I counted petals by lamplight, touching each with a wet thumb where the pencil had smudged. Forty-eight, then forty-seven, then forty-eight again, which was the first honest sum I had made all voyage.

When the weather eased, Okafor came down for his cocoa and found me scrubbing the bulkhead. He studied the ring of petals for a long while and asked what it was for. I told him it was the stores, every tin of it accounted for. He laughed the way men laugh when they have been frightened and are ashamed of it. Then he took the pencil from behind my ear and drew a six-pointed star in the centre, where the flour tins met, and said that was the bit that got them home.

I left it there when we came up the Mersey. The paint has long since gone, but I still see that star when I shut my eyes at the range, the one thing on the page that was never food.