Black and grey dotwork lotus mandala tattoo centred on the sternum, with white tape across the upper chest.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Lotus mandala on the sternum

Dotwork · Chest · Black and grey · Photo

A symmetrical lotus flower with layered petals rises above an ornate mandala-style base, all rendered in black ink. The design is built from stippled dots and fine lines, with soft grey shading giving the central petals depth. It is centred on the chest with pale tape along the upper edges of the frame.

Dotwork Botanical Geometric Chest Lotus Mandala Flower 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

Mrs Aldous wants the lotus by Saturday, and you have spent three evenings bent over the kitchen table in Hallam Row with a pricking wheel and a sheet of tracing paper. The pattern came from a book her late husband brought back from Bombay, a plate of a flower opening in rings, petal inside petal, all of it as balanced as a held breath. You have never trusted symmetry. Your hands are always a fraction out.

Keep reading

So you prick it. Every line becomes a row of pin holes, close as sand, and the paper goes soft under your thumb like something handled too often. Your mother calls up the stairs that the kettle has boiled twice. You tell her you are nearly finished with the bottom petals, which is true, and the bottom petals are where the trouble starts. The left curl has crept a hair wider than the right, and you cannot tell whether it was your wrist or the book.

On Saturday Mrs Aldous brings a parcel of lace she wants stencilled onto a christening gown. You lay the pricked sheet over the cloth, rub charcoal through the holes, and tap it with the pounce bag. Dots appear, faint at first, then sharper. When you lift the paper, the lotus sits there in grey specks on the white, and she holds it up to the window and goes quiet for so long you wonder whether she has noticed the left side.

"Who drew this?" she asks.

You look at the lopsided curl. "The book," you say. She laughs, and you are not entirely sure you lied.