Black linework tattoo of a mandala, lotus flowers and feather-like wing shapes across an upper arm and shoulder, in a Botanical and Geometric style.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Mandala and lotus linework on upper arm

Botanical · Upper arm · Black and grey · Photo

The tattoo covers the upper arm and shoulder with a sleeve of black outline work. It includes a large mandala, a lotus-like flower, a rose-like bloom near the elbow and feather or wing shapes curving over the shoulder. The lines are fine and even, with the mandala details drawn in tight geometric patterns, and the composition wraps around the arm.

Botanical Geometric Upper arm Shoulder Mandala Lotus Flower Rose Feather Wing Sleeve

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 brass dividers slipped twice before the circle would close, and Mr Okafor, who had drawn charts for the Harriet Lane for eleven years, sucked his teeth and told me to start again. I was nineteen, and the compass rose I was copying was meant to hang in the saloon above the captain's chair, so I didn't argue. I ruled the lines from the centre outward, sixteen points, then sixteen more inside them, until the thing looked less like a map and more like the rosette on a bishop's ceiling.

Keep reading

Out past the Cape the sea went flat for nine days and we sat becalmed under a sky so white it hurt the eyes. The cook had a tin of dried lotus seed he'd bought in Canton and swore would bring wind if soaked in rum. Nobody believed him, but everybody drank the rum. I spent the stillness drawing feathers, long curling wing shapes, because the albatross that had followed us since Tristan kept returning to the stern and folding itself down like a gate I'd never seen shut.

On the tenth morning the bird was gone and a breeze came up from the south-west smelling of rain. Okafor walked the length of the deck, looked at the rose pinned to the chart table, and said it was the cleanest thing he'd seen aboard. He didn't say it was the best, and I was glad of that. I carried the sheet home to Bristol folded inside my coat, and when my mother asked what I'd brought back from the Indies I unfolded it and said, that's the sea. She said it looked more like a cathedral. Maybe that was the point.