Black and grey dotwork and linework mandala tattoo with lotus-like petals running along the inner forearm, with a small Roman numeral below the wrist.

Mandala and lotus forearm piece

Dotwork · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

The tattoo covers the inner forearm with a symmetrical mandala built from layered lotus-like petals, leaves and small rosette patterns. Fine linework outlines the shapes, while stippled dotwork and hatching give the petals and centre their shading. The design is in black and grey and narrows toward the wrist, where a small Roman numeral sits below it against a plain white wall.

Dotwork Botanical Blackwork Forearm Mandala Lotus Flower Leaves Petal Rosette Geometric pattern Roman numeral

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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

Hush now, and let the fire settle, because the mason's girl is about to climb the scaffold again and I will not have you talking through it. You know the lotus stair at Velmarra? Every petal of it was cut by hand, and every petal was cut twice, once for the king's eye and once for the rain.

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The king of Ysolde had let the river dry to a thread. His seers said the water would return only if the palace floor bloomed, so he set the whole court to carving a mandala into the great hall, rings within rings, a flower that opened inward toward a single stone at its heart. Old Brannoc the mason said it could not be done in one season. His apprentice, Ilse, said it could be done if they stopped carving petals and started carving the spaces between them, the little rosettes where the light could stand still.

She worked through the dry months with a hooked chisel and a pot of ink, pricking dots into the stone so the shadows would hold. Every evening she tallied her marks on the wall beside the old flood line. Four marks, then eleven, then nineteen. On the last night of the year she found the centre stone cracked along a hairline, and she sat with her back against the cold wall until the moon came round.

At dawn she carved one final petal, narrow as a fish bone, along the crack itself. The king came in grumbling and stepped onto the bloom to see it. Before he could curse, a sound like slow breath rose through the floor, and the river, forty leagues off, began to climb. Ilse was never named on any wall, and the king took the credit. But the petals at the bloom's edge are cut finer than the rest, and I have always thought that is why the water listens to them.