Two women seated on a sandy beach seen from behind, with a gold mandala-style design on the lower back of the woman on the right and small white markings on the other woman's upper arm.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Gold mandala tattoo on a lower back at the beach

Geometric · Back · Colour · Photo

Two women sit side by side on pale sand with their backs to the camera, wearing black bikinis and wide-brimmed hats under a bright blue sky. The woman on the right has a gold mandala-style design on her lower back, drawn with solid, symmetrical shapes and no shading, and the design appears to be a temporary metallic piece rather than ink. The other woman has small white and silver decorative markings on her upper arm and hand, and the composition centres on the sea and shoreline behind them.

Geometric Back Upper arm Mandala Beach Bikini Hat Sea Sand Floral 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 stencil had been cut from drafting film, and by eleven that morning the sun had curled its edges like old toast. Nan Trewin always said a mandala wants the sea breathing behind it, so I pinned the film to the stall's awning with two clothes pegs and pretended not to watch the surf.

Keep reading

Our gold came in books of transfer leaf, the kind you press on with a damp sponge and peel away after an hour. Nan bought it from a man in Penzance who sold it by the sheet to anyone who wouldn't ask what they meant to do with it. She had one rule: draw the circle freehand from the centre outwards, because a symmetrical thing you almost get right is more honest than one you get perfect. My hand shook on every line. Hers never did.

That afternoon a gull snatched the second sheet off the counter and carried it down the shingle. I chased it as far as the rockpools, then stopped, because the leaf had caught the light and the wet sand glittered in a ring where it had landed. Someone had already walked round it. A child had drawn a spiral beside it with a cocktail stick, and the tide was coming in to take them both.

By four there was a queue of six, all wanting the same pattern. I cut a new stencil from the net mesh Nan kept under the counter, pressed it down, and let the water finish the rest of the afternoon without me. I kept the last sheet back for her. Some circles are meant to go back to the sand.