White lotus flower stencil designs in four sizes on a teal gradient background, with one large and three smaller versions.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Lotus stencil designs in four sizes

Botanical · Colour · Flash

The image shows a set of white lotus flower designs on a teal background, with one large lotus at the top and three smaller ones below. Each lotus has layered, pointed petals drawn as solid shapes with no internal shading. The lighter centre of the background sits behind the smaller designs, and the colour is limited to white and teal.

Botanical Lotus Flower Stencil Petal

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dear Nebet, the great stencil came back from the masons' yard split along its third petal, so I have cut it again from the old hide. I am sorry the cedar oil stank out the whole courtyard. Master Ankhu says the lotus for the upper hall must open wider than anything on the east wall, because the steward will walk beneath it on the feast of the inundation.

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I have made four sizes, as he asked: the great one for the lintel, two middling ones for the pillars, and a small one for the offering bench. The little one was the hardest. The inner petals nearly closed up when I pierced them, and I had to leave a bridge of hide between each cut so the ochre would not bleed through and blur the bud. Ankhu laughed and said a lotus that shuts itself is one the gods will forgive. I did not find it funny at the time.

Yesterday the painters pressed the big stencil flat against the wet plaster and dabbed the pigment through it with their stubby brushes. When they lifted it away, the wall held a bloom exactly where the pattern had been, its petals stacked one above another like the layers of a lit lamp. The blue ground around it had darkened a little under the damp, and the white of the plaster stood out against it so clearly that I stood there longer than I should have.

Come and see it before the damp gets into the lintel. Bring the good brushes, and do not let Ankhu tell you the bridges were his idea.