Black and white flash drawing of a symmetrical mandala tattoo design with a lotus flower at its base, shaded in dotwork and linework, with no body placement shown.

Mandala and lotus flash design with dotwork

Dotwork · Black and grey · Flash

A symmetrical mandala design rises from a lotus flower at the base, with layered petals, leaves, scrolls and teardrop-shaped motifs. The linework is crisp and bold in places, while shading is built up from fine stippled dots, especially within the petals and outer ornaments. The design is drawn in black ink on a plain white background, centred and arranged vertically with a dotted chain hanging below the lotus.

Dotwork Botanical Mandala Lotus Flower Leaves Scroll Teardrop Dotted chain 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

The pattern book comes over on the Tuesday boat, wrapped in oilcloth and smelling of diesel, and you are the only one left on Skerra who can still read the old hand. Mrs Corrie's sister has sent it from Stromness with a note pinned inside the cover: Mother wanted this kept dry. You spread the first sheet across the kitchen table while the kettle ticks and the gulls quarrel over the harbour wall.

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A lotus sits at the foot of the page, its petals pricked out with a needle so the dots could be dusted through onto cloth. Above it rise arch upon arch, each one ringed with scallops and curled like wet rope, until the lines close into a point. Below the flower a chain of tiny dots swags down the margin and ends in a single teardrop. You count the dots on either side. Forty-one, forty-one. Whoever drew it wanted the thing to balance, and balance takes a patience you can feel in the work itself.

Mrs Corrie, who taught you the lace stitch when the stitches were beyond you, once told you the lotus grows out of mud and still comes up clean. The island floods every February, and every March the pond behind the kirk goes gold with flowers nobody planted. She would have known what to make of this sheet. She would have sat where you are sitting and laughed at the scallops.

You pin the drawing to the window where the afternoon light comes through the glass. The teardrop at the bottom catches a single bead of sun, and for a moment the whole design looks as though it has been dipped in water and lifted out again. You fetch the needle and the pot of pricking powder, and you begin with the chain, because it is the easiest part to get wrong.