Black and grey dotwork lotus mandala tattoo centred on the upper back of a woman with her hair in a ponytail.

Lotus mandala tattoo on upper back

Dotwork · Back · Black and grey · Photo

A woman's bare upper back shows a symmetrical lotus flower with layered petals filled with fine dots and ornamental linework. Two short vertical rows of dots sit above and below the motif, and the tattoo is set against soft natural shading of the skin. The image is in black and grey with a blurred woodland background.

Dotwork Botanical Back Lotus Mandala Dot Forest

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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

Put the lamp nearer, Tobias, and stop picking at that hardtack. We've been stuck nine days in this glass calm off the Azores, and the sea won't shift until I've told you about Ellen Marr's compass box.

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Her father, Silas, was carpenter aboard the Halcyon Jane, and on the Lisbon run he carved a lotus into the walnut lid, petal over petal, so fine you needed a glass to find the edges. Around the flower he drove rows of tiny holes and packed them with lampblack, one for every port the ship had touched. Sixteen by the time we rounded the Cape. He said a flower was a poor joke against the wind, but the men liked it.

Off Madeira the fever took the second mate, then the cook, then Silas himself. Ellen kept the box. Each time a man went over the side she pressed a fresh dot into the wood with a sail needle, down the straight line beneath the petals, until the line ran off the lid and onto the hinge. Nobody asked her why. The captain did, once, and she turned the lid to him without a word, and he went below and didn't come up for his supper.

When we docked at Bristol, Ellen hung the box on the chapel nail and walked off up the quay into the rain. I still think of that lid when someone calls a calm dull. Now, who's fetching the rum?