Flash design of a pink, purple and yellow lotus flower with black outline swirls beneath it, drawn in a botanical style.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Lotus flower with swirls

Botanical · Colour · Flash

The design shows a lotus flower with layered, pointed petals shaded in pink, purple and yellow gradients. Bold black outlines define the petals, and curling black scrolls sit above and below the bloom. The composition is centred on a plain white background.

Botanical Lotus Flower Swirl Scroll Petal

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

Dear Ruth,

Keep reading

The lotus opened again last night, though I'd given up on it. You'll remember the tank at the back of Mr Pargeter's glasshouse, the one he filled with pond silt from the Frome and then forgot about. Nobody has touched it since the spring. I went out with the lamp after the last of the potting and there it was, one bud split open at the water's edge, pink at the rim and going to butter yellow toward the heart, the petals bruised purple along their undersides in a way you only notice when the light is low.

Pargeter says lotus seeds can sleep for centuries and wake when they please. He said it the way he says everything, as though he has read it somewhere reliable and is disappointed in you for doubting it. I told him I didn't doubt it. I only doubted anyone would come back for them. The glasshouse is to be let to a firm that sells cut flowers to hotels in Cardiff, and the men with clipboards measured the tank on Tuesday and wrote something down without once looking at the water.

So I did something foolish. I cut the bloom at the stalk, wrapped it in wet newspaper and rode the Bath Road bus with it on my knees like a cake. It is on the kitchen table now, in the jam jar with the blue rim, and its black curled stems look nothing like the drawings in Pargeter's book, but they hold it up in the most ridiculous way. I'll bring it on Sunday. Don't tell him. He'll want it back in the tank, and by then it will have decided for itself.