Black and grey dotwork and linework mandala and lotus tattoos covering a bent arm, with a geometric mandala on the upper arm and a floral design on the forearm.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Mandala and lotus sleeve on a bent arm

Dotwork · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

The photograph shows a bent arm covered in black and grey tattoos built around circular mandala motifs, a large lotus-style flower and layered geometric patterns. The linework is fine and precise, with stippled dotwork used to shade the petals and the centre of the flower. The grey tank top behind the arm is out of focus and the composition is cropped close around the elbow.

Dotwork Geometric Botanical Forearm Upper arm Mandala Lotus Flower Geometric pattern Circle Petal

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dear Tom, the rose window at St Edmund's came out of its frame on Monday, all forty-one pieces wrapped in newspaper that smells of the Eastern Daily Press, and Mr Pollard has set me to the centre first because he says a girl with steady hands can be trusted with the hard part. The centre is a lotus, or what the Victorians thought a lotus ought to look like, and every petal is stippled with a dull brown paint that has to be dabbed on with a cork, one dot at a time, until the light comes through the glass in grey instead of gold.

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Pollard counts the dots. He lays a ruler across the lead cames and tells me there are eighty-odd to a petal and the rest of the window has none, so I must not be lazy. I told him my dad counted sheep that way on the fell, one stone for each, and he said that was a fine way to waste a summer. Yet I like it. By the third afternoon the dots had made a shadow look like a real thing, a curl of petal turning away from you, and the ring of geometry round the edge, which I'd taken for plain decoration, repeats every twelve so the eye can't find where it begins.

Pollard's wife brought tea out to the scaffold on Thursday and stood a long while looking up. She said the window was a clock that had forgotten what hour it was. I don't know what she meant, but I wrote it down so I could ask you.

Tom, if you get leave in August, come and see it before we finish. The centre will be dry by then. I'll be the one on the ladder with cork dust in my hair, pretending I'm not watching the post.