Grey ornamental mandala tattoo on a limb, with hands applying an orange cosmetic swatch to the skin beside it.

Grey mandala tattoo beside an orange swatch

Other · Black and grey · Photo

Hands hold a compact of orange product with a black applicator and apply a swatch of it to skin on a light blue towel. Above the swatch sits a grey and black mandala-style tattoo with fine ornamental linework and shaded detail. The shot is taken close up from above, with the tattoo and swatch filling the centre of the frame.

Other Mandala Tattoo Hand

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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

You find the compact in the lost property tin on the ninth floor, under a pair of child's wellies and a brass key nobody claims. Mrs Okonedo from flat 14 says it belonged to the woman who painted the stairwell before the council stopped paying for paint, and that she used to press the powder with a black sponge tip and then tap it, twice, against whatever she meant to keep. You take it because it is the only orange in the building that isn't rust.

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For a month you carry it in your coat pocket. On the lift wall on the fourth floor someone has scratched a circle in biro, rings inside rings, petals of tiny stabs that go round and round until the paper gives way. You sit on the bottom step with the compact open and copy it onto the back of an envelope, and every time you reach the centre your pen slips and you start again from the outside.

On the Tuesday the lifts are off, so you climb. At the eleventh landing the door to the roof is propped with a bin, and the wind comes through smelling of wet slate and somebody's frying onions. You kneel on the felt and press the orange out onto the concrete in a rough wedge, the way she did, and it takes the grey light and turns it the colour of a tangerine peel. Below, the estate is a grid of lit windows, each one somebody's kitchen.

The compact is empty by the time the sun goes. You tap the applicator against the edge of the parapet, twice, and leave the swatch to weather. Next morning there is a fresh circle in biro on the lift wall, and beside it, in a hand that is not yours, someone has drawn a second one, a little off-centre, as if to say the first was not finished yet.