Colour tattoo of a lotus flower with a central Om symbol and swirling linework, placed on the back of a neck.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Lotus with Om symbol on the neck

Botanical · Neck · Colour · Photo

A lotus flower with pink and lilac petals surrounds a yellow and orange sunburst holding a black Om symbol. Thin dark swirls and dotted tendrils extend from the flower outward and downward. Bold black outlines and soft blue and pink shading give the flower a dimensional look against bare skin.

Botanical Neo-trad Neck Lotus Flower Om symbol Sunburst Swirl Petal Dot

Find an artist for this

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 last season the Halloran Brothers Circus wintered in a field outside Stoke, the ground turned to porridge by November, and Dad stopped paying for diesel to heat the big top. I was the one who painted the banners. Nobody else on the lot could draw a straight line, so when the ringmaster asked for something to sell the final three weeks, I took a tin of lilac and a brush the width of my thumb and started on the canvas that hung over the gate.

Keep reading

I did not know what to paint. The clowns had gone to the Co-op, the ponies were sold to a farm in Wales, and all we had left was the old yellow sunburst from the posters. I put a lotus in the middle because Nan kept one on her bathroom tile and I liked the idea of something opening in a muddy place. Then, in the centre, I painted the black mark from the front of her notebooks, the one she said meant the whole world was humming, and I did it carefully so the curves stayed round.

The sign went up on the Tuesday. Nobody came for the lions, because there were no lions, but a woman with a pushchair stopped to look at the flower, and a boy from the bungalows asked if he could add some dots with a felt pen. Before I could say no, he had trailed them down the canvas like seeds falling off a stalk. Dad stood under it with his hands in his coat pockets and said nothing for a long time.

The tent came down on the Friday. We folded it into the lorry in the rain, boots sucking at the ruts, and when I looked back the lotus was still pinned to the gate with cable ties, its petals gone pale and streaked. At the edge of the field, where water had pooled in a tractor track, something green had pushed up through the mud, a single bud, unbothered by any of us. I photographed it and sent it to Dad, who was already in the cab. He replied with a thumbs up, which from him was a sonnet.