Black linework mandala and paisley tattoo covering a woman's shoulder and upper arm, with a flower-centred design.

Mandala and paisley tattoo on shoulder and arm

Geometric · Shoulder · Black and grey · Photo

The design is a large flower-centred mandala with layered petals, dotted accents and paisley swirls that wrap over the shoulder and down the upper arm. It is drawn in black outline with a fairly even line weight and no shading, so the skin tone forms the only fill. The photo is cropped at the neck, so no face is shown.

Geometric Shoulder Upper arm Mandala Paisley Flower Swirl Dot Leaves

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

Late August in the Hartigan orchard, and the windfalls had started to ferment in the grass under the Bramley trees. Nell knelt with her grandfather's penknife and cut one across the middle, the way he had taught her, so the core fell open like a small wheel. Five pale chambers, each with its black seed set in a neat teardrop. "That's your pattern," Grandad Tom said from the ladder. "Everything else is just that, done bigger."

Keep reading

She had been drawing for the Whitcombe sisters since June, a commission for a bobbin lace veil, and every sheet she sent back came with the same note: too busy, too much like a hedge. The sisters wanted something quiet. Nell took the apple half home in a paper bag, pinned it to the kitchen board, and sketched around it in pencil until the lines spilled into the margins of the ledger: rings of petals, tiny dots where the seeds sat, and a curl running off the edge like the stalk of a pear that had grown twisted towards the sun.

The sisters came on the Saturday. Hilda looked at the drawing for a long time without speaking. Then she laid one finger on the curl. "This one's wandering off," she said. "I like it." Nell felt something unclench that she hadn't known was tight.

Afterwards she walked back through the rows with the ledger under her arm. The windfalls had gone soft and brown, wasps working at the sweet ends. She stopped at Tom's ladder, still propped against the Bramley, and sat on the bottom rung to finish the paisley swirl, her pencil leaving a faint grey ring on the wood where the apple had rested.