Pencil sketch of a symmetrical lotus flower with layered petals and dotted lines above and below, drawn as a possible botanical tattoo design.

Lotus flower pencil sketch

Botanical · Black and grey · Flash

A symmetrical lotus flower is drawn in pencil, with pointed petals fanning out from a rounded centre and fine radiating strokes inside the lower petals. A short column of small dots and circles extends above and below the flower along a vertical line. The image is shown in black and grey on a plain light grey background, with the flower filling the centre of the frame.

Botanical Lotus Flower Petal Dot Sketch

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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

The rain stops just after Shrewsbury, and you tie the barge up below the willows where the water goes flat and brown. The drawing is still folded in the biscuit tin on the cabin shelf, soft at the creases. Mrs Pryce at the lock gave it to you with the coal invoice, tucked between two tide tables, and said her son had drawn it the summer before he left for the mills in Manchester. She wanted it taken somewhere it could be seen, not kept in a drawer.

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You unfold it on the tiller board and weigh the corners with a spanner and a jam jar. The lotus has its petals fanned out like a hand held open, the lower ones curled as if the current had pressed them down. Above and below the bloom run the small rings, three above and three below, which Mrs Pryce said were the knots on the towrope her husband used to count when he walked the horse along the towpath. You count them now against the light, and the dots look like fine rain that has stopped halfway down the page.

Out on the mud, something broad and green pushes up through the slick. It is not a lotus, of course. This river has never grown one, only yellow flags and bulrushes that bend when the boats go by. But the leaves lie flat on the water as if someone careful had placed them there, and you find yourself checking their edges against the pencil lines.

You take the drawing to the bow and hold it over the water, matching the petal tips to the real ones, and then you let the paper go. It sinks slowly, the grey lines running, the rings last to disappear. When you reach the lock again you tell Mrs Pryce the flower opened. She nods as though she has known all along, and counts the knots on her fingers.