Black and grey photograph of a woman seen from behind with a dotwork lotus tattoo centred on her upper back, between the shoulder blades.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Lotus tattoo on upper back

Dotwork · Back · Black and grey · Photo

A woman with her hands raised to her head is photographed from behind, wearing a white vest top. Centred between her shoulder blades is a lotus flower built from fine lines and stippled dots, with a thin dotted line extending below it. The image is monochrome, with soft lighting that keeps the focus on the tattoo against the plain background.

Dotwork Botanical Fine line Back Lotus Flower Mandala Woman Bracelet Hair

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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

The seed packet arrived in a government envelope with one corner torn, and Edith Marsh read the address twice before she believed it was meant for her. Mr Oakes from the mill had signed for it and set it on the post office counter with the care of a man handing over something that might bite. Inside was a single dry seed, grey as a pebble, and a letter from a glasshouse keeper in a city she had only seen on maps, saying it had been drawn from peat sealed away for two hundred years.

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She planted it in a tin bath behind the chapel hall, because the canal was too cold and the allotments too public. Each morning through the spring she lifted the lid to look for green, and each morning there was only wet black soil and the smell of old pennies. Her nephew said it was a waste of a good bath. The vicar asked whether it was some sort of marrow. Edith said nothing. She pushed a row of pegs into the path from the bath to the back wall, one for every day she had waited, because she had once been told that the lotus climbs through dark water towards the light, and she wanted to be certain she could find her way back down to it.

In July a pale bud broke the surface on a Tuesday, closed tight and faintly ridged like a folded letter. By noon it had opened, white at the edges and dark at the heart, with the chapel's sooty wall behind it looking more grey than ever. Edith sat on the step with her tea going cold and counted the pegs. There were ninety-one.

She left the lid off for the rest of the summer.