Black line tattoo of a lotus mandala with dot details on the lower back, in a dotwork and botanical style.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Lotus mandala with dotwork on lower back

Dotwork · Back · Black and grey · Photo

A symmetrical lotus flower sits at the centre of the image, built from layered petals with dotted outlines and inner motifs of dots and scrolling lines. A column of single dots runs above and below the flower, and two small leaves sit at the base. The tattoo is done in solid black ink with no shading or colour, and the flower fills the centre of the frame against plain skin.

Dotwork Botanical Back Lotus Mandala Dot Leaves Flower Petal

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The brass medallion in the middle of the Palais floor had lost six of its dots since spring, and Ruth had been sent to fix them before Saturday. She knelt on the sprung boards with a tin of black filler and a cocktail stick, working round the petals one at a time, while the band tuned up in the gallery and a sweeper somewhere behind the bar sang off-key to himself.

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Walter, the caretaker, watched from a folding chair with his cap on his knee. He said the pattern had come from a Mr Lal who painted the proscenium before the war and insisted on a single column of dots down every panel, above and below the flower, so the eye would know where the design began and where it ended. "Otherwise it just runs off the edge," Walter said. "Lot of people think the dots are decoration. They're a fence."

Ruth's hands were shaking by the fourth petal. Her mother was at the sink in Narborough Road, her brother's letter was still unanswered in her coat pocket, and every dot she pressed in felt like a decision she could not take back. Walter did not offer to help. He only got up, unscrewed the lid of the tin and tapped it level with the heel of his hand.

On Saturday the hall filled and the couples began to turn in long slow circles around the centre of the floor. Ruth stood by the cloakroom with a glass of lemonade and watched the petals of the brass flower catch the light as the dancers passed over them, each dot a small dark point in the gold. Nobody looked down. They were all too busy finding their way out from the middle.