Blue line drawing on tracing paper of a mandala design with dotted chains and drop pendants, drawn as a flash design for a tattoo.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Mandala and dotted chain design sketch

Geometric · Colour · Flash

A detailed blue line drawing of a central mandala or lotus motif, with concentric petals, a small gem-like centre and fine ornamental detail. Dotted chains loop out to each side and end in diamond and teardrop pendants, with a curved line along the top. The linework is fine and even, shown flat on cream tracing paper with a pencil and marker at the edges.

Geometric Dotwork Mandala Lotus Chain Dotted line Pendant Gem Ornament

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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

You have scratched the lotus out of the wax eleven times before Menas will look at it. Each attempt you smooth away with the flat end of the bone stylus and start again, because the petals must open evenly, every one the same distance from the small gem at the centre. A collar that hangs crooked is a collar that comes back to the workshop, and Menas has no patience for returns.

Keep reading

The rest of the commission is simpler and harder at once. Strings of dots run out from the lotus to either side, each bead no larger than a lentil, and from the bottom of every loop hangs a diamond or a teardrop. Menas says the dots are the cheapest part and the most important, because a customer forgives a crooked petal faster than a row of beads that drifts. So you count them, twenty to a stretch, marking each with the point of the stylus while the lamp smokes and the harbour bells ring for the evening grain ships.

On the twelfth attempt you stop counting. The lotus opens cleanly, the gem sits in the middle like a drop of dew, and the chain falls to either side as if someone had lifted it from still water and let it run. Menas takes the wax from your hands and tilts it toward the lamp. He is quiet for so long that you fold your fingers together to keep them still.

Then he lays his thumb over the gem and says the drawing is good enough to cut. Tomorrow the smith will pour the gold and you will not see the collar again. But one morning, he tells you, you will walk along the harbour wall and see a woman in a blue cloak with the lotus rising above her neckline, and you will know that the line you drew is the one she is wearing.