Black pen drawing of a dotwork lotus mandala with an Om symbol at its centre, shown as a tattoo design on paper.

Lotus mandala with Om symbol design

Dotwork · Black and grey · Flash

A symmetrical lotus flower with layered petals sits at the centre, with an Om symbol inside the central bud. Fine linework and stippled dotwork shade the petals, and strings of dots and small diamond shapes hang beneath and above the flower. The design is drawn in black ink on a pale background, with a black pen lying to the left.

Dotwork Botanical Lotus Om symbol Mandala Dot Diamond Bead

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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

Asha, your grandfather's pen came back from the repair man on Belgrave Road with a new nib and no explanation, so I have been using it to draw the lotus again while the kettle takes its time. Hold it the way I showed you, with the wrist light and the fingers doing the work. When you pressed too hard on the petals last month the ink bled like a bruise, and you cried over it, which was foolish, because the paper forgives more than you think. The bud comes first, then the outer petals, then the little curled scrolls on either side. Save the Om for last, when your hand has stopped shaking. Write it the way you would say a name you love, slowly, one stroke at a time.

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The strings of beads are the part everyone rushes. Count them out before you touch the page: three from the base of the bud, seven from the left tip, seven from the right, and the diamonds at the top where you are allowed to stop breathing for a moment. If the spacing is wrong the whole flower sags, and nobody will know why except you. Mr Desai from the post office asked me last week to put one on his wife's wrist, the same design, and I told him to come back in a year. Some things should not be rushed by a man who wants his wife to be surprised.

I found the first drawing I ever made of this lotus, pinned under the calendar in the kitchen. There is a gap in the third string, a bead I forgot to place the year your mother was expecting you. I never went back to fill it. Every time I see it I think the flower is more honest for having that space.

Leave one gap in every string, Asha. The eye will go looking for it and forget to notice the rest of the pattern, and that is exactly where you want it to rest.