Black ink lotus mandala design with dotted outlines and a line of dots running diagonally, drawn on a pale surface under warm light.

Lotus mandala design with dots

Botanical · Black and grey · Flash

A black ink drawing of a lotus flower with layered petals, each filled with dotwork, fine lines and small leaf-like motifs. A diagonal line of graduated dots runs down the left and right sides of the flower. The design is shown in a warm, low-light setting against a cream background, with the lower right of the frame in shadow.

Botanical Dotwork Lotus Mandala Dot Flower Petal

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The ovens have been ticking for ten minutes and the window over the sink is still black, so you have the bakery to yourself, which is how you like it. On the steel bench sits the retirement cake for Mrs Pryce, two tiers of lemon sponge under a skin of pale buttercream. Your piping bag is the only thing in the room that has not been asked to hurry.

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You start at the centre, where the petals meet. A small teardrop first, then another folded around it, each one drawn with the tip held just above the cake so the icing falls soft and even. Outside the layers you add the dots: a row along each petal's edge, pressed one by one with a cocktail stick dipped in cocoa, until the lace of them looks almost like frost. Somewhere behind you the flour sacks settle with a sigh.

By the time the sky over the car park goes the colour of weak tea, the flower is finished except for the trail. You lean in with the finest nozzle and set three dots down the side of the cake, then two, then one, smaller each time, like the last crumbs sliding off the edge of a plate. Mrs Pryce will cut straight through the middle and never see them. You wipe the bench, switch off the lamp, and let the first delivery van's headlights find the box on the step.