Black and grey blackwork mandala tattoo on the centre of the chest, shown on a person in a floral kimono-style top and a ribbed white top.

Mandala chest tattoo in black ink

Blackwork · Chest · Black and grey · Photo

A black and grey photograph of a symmetrical mandala tattoo on the centre of the chest, with a pointed upper motif above a wide scalloped lower panel. The design uses fine dense linework, dotted outlines and solid black fills, with no shading or colour. The image is cropped from the lips down, and the tattoo sits in the middle of the frame against a pale ribbed top that is partly lifted.

Blackwork Geometric Chest Mandala Ornament Geometric pattern Floral motif Symmetry

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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

Hettie Lowe folded the square of card seven times on the trestle, pressing each crease flat with her thumbnail while rain drummed on the tarpaulin above the stall. Her father had taught her that a pattern lies to you until you unfold it, so she never trusted a centre she had not found herself. The market at Kettering was half empty, the awnings sagging and the cobbles running with water toward the drain by the fishmonger's.

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Most of her custom wanted ribbon or cheap buttons, but a few people came for the stencils she cut by hand, sheets of tracing card that sign-painters and tattooists bought in bundles and never asked her to explain. Her latest order was for a point at the top, like a flame drawn upward, and a wide scalloped skirt beneath it, every scallop closed with a dot so the ink would sit cleanly. She worked from the fold outward with a fine blade, lifting the card to the grey light every few cuts to check the balance.

When she opened the square, the left-hand scallop sat a hair shallower than the right, a fault only she could see. The man who collected it on Saturday held the stencil against the sky and turned it slowly, tracing a finger along the lace of points. "Mirror it," he said, "and nobody will ever know." She told him the card was the one part of the design that had been made by hand, and he laughed, paid, and walked off through the puddles with the pattern folded inside his coat.

Afterwards she sat under the tarpaulin with the spoiled sheet on her knee. The rain found its way off the edge in a single line, running straight down the centre of the table, exactly where she would have put it.