Black line lotus mandala tattoo with dangling star and moon charms and blue, purple and pink watercolour splashes on a forearm.

Lotus mandala with watercolour splashes on a forearm

Botanical · Forearm · Mixed · Photo

A lotus flower with layered petals and ornamental filigree sits at the centre, with a row of dotted and beaded chains hanging below it ending in small star, moon and diamond charms. The petals and charms are drawn in fine black outlines with light grey shading, while loose blue, purple and pink watercolour washes spread behind and around the design. The tattoo is centred on the forearm and fills most of the frame against a plain skin background.

Botanical Fine line Forearm Lotus Flower Mandala Watercolour Star Moon Charm Petal

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Ada had been up the scaffold since six, and the blue would not sit. Every time she loaded her brush with ultramarine, the watercolour ran off the lime wash in thin lines, as if the chapel at Harrowgill had decided it would not be copied. Below her, Mr Thwaite sat on an upturned crate with his flask, pretending not to watch.

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The boss was the last intact piece of the old vault, a lotus carved in grey stone, its petals layered like spoons stacked in a drawer. From its rim hung little chains of beads, and at the end of each chain a star, a crescent moon or a diamond. Thwaite had told her the moons were for the nights people had sat up with the dying, the stars for the ones who had gone to sea and not come back. Ada had not asked what the diamonds were for. She suspected he would say they were for the ones who stayed.

When the rain came through the broken lead, it found the blue before she did. A cold thread ran down the plaster and bloomed across the petals, pink where the ochre had flaked, purple where the old pigment still held. Ada swore and reached for a rag. Then she stopped with the cloth an inch from the wall. The stain had done what her hand could not. It made the lotus look as though it were opening under water, the charms swinging loose in it.

She left the wash where it fell. Thwaite climbed the ladder slowly, looked for a long time, and handed her the flask. Together they signed the corner of the sheet with a small diamond, the way the old painter must have done.