Black ink geometric mandala and ornamental band tattoo on a forearm, with fine dots running towards the wrist.

Mandala cuff tattoo on a forearm

Geometric · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

A forearm carries a band of ornamental black ink, topped by a large mandala with a central flower and petal shapes. Below it, stacked bands of scallops, leaf-like shapes, lines and dots form a cuff-like design that ends near the wrist. The work is done in black ink only, with linework and small dotted accents, and the subject is shown against an indoor salon background.

Geometric Dotwork Forearm Mandala Flower Cuff Dot Line Scallop Leaves

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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

Sit down there, and mind the kettle, it's been on since the tide turned. You want the story of the plate, not the one about the storm. The storm's in every tale on this boat, but the plate's ours.

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Your gran's mother brought it aboard the Mary Ellen in a sea chest, wrapped in a tea towel that smelt of camphor. Round as the moon and white as a gull's belly, with a ring of scallops along the rim and then bands inside, one tight ring after another, like the rings you get when you drop a stone in the harbour. Right in the middle sat a flower with too many petals, and every petal dotted, so you'd never know where the pattern ended. The cook before me, Harold Pask, swore the dots were for counting the days a man spent ashore before he came back.

Harold broke it the winter of the big swell. Dropped it on the galley deck and it went in three pieces, and he sat on the step and wept like a child. So we mended it with fish glue and stood it on the rack, the cracks showing like a map of somewhere nobody wants to go.

It's still here. Turn it to the lamp. Every crack has been traced over in black ink, so you can follow the pattern right through the breaks. Go on, count the dots. Count them, boy. Forty-one. Harold was wrong, mind. It was never about days ashore. It was about getting every one of us home to eat off it again.