Black linework lotus flower with ornamental drops and dotwork detail running down the centre of a woman's upper back, seen from behind.

Lotus and ornamental spine tattoo on upper back

Fine line · Back · Black and grey · Photo

A woman is photographed from behind against a dark background, showing a tattoo down the centre of her upper back. The design is a lotus flower with layered petals, topped by a scrolled ornament and extended downwards by a chain of hanging drops and a diamond motif. The work is in fine black linework with fine dotwork accents and light shading, with no colour, and the design is centred neatly on the spine.

Fine line Dotwork Back Lotus Ornament Mandala Diamond

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

Nadia had been stranded at the fuel halt on the Sawdah road for three hours when the old man at the stall lifted a brass lantern from its hook and asked whether she could mend it. Its glass was cracked, its chain tangled with wire, and the base had been bent flat by something heavier than wind.

Keep reading

She worked on it with a pair of pliers from her rucksack and a tin of fine needle files. The lantern had a lotus cast into its crown, petals layered like the folds of a closed hand, and beneath it hung a chain of small drops, each one ending in a point. Every drop had been knocked out of true. She straightened them one at a time while the stall keeper poured tea into chipped glasses without sugar and said nothing about the lorry.

When the last drop swung free, the old man tapped the diamond at the foot of the chain and said his wife had made it from a spoon she was given at their wedding. Nadia asked why he never sold the lantern. He said a thing with a chain like that has to be hung properly, and no one on this road had ever had the patience to do it.

The lorry came back at dusk, horn blaring. Nadia wrapped the lantern in a rag and set it on the dashboard, and its shadows slid across the windscreen as they rolled east into the dark, each drop catching the last of the light before it fell.