Black and grey mandala-style elephant tattoo on the outer thigh, with dotted and geometric patterns filling the head, ears and body.

Mandala elephant on a thigh

Blackwork · Thigh · Black and grey · Photo

A large elephant facing the camera is built entirely from ornamental mandala patterns, with circles, petal shapes, teardrop motifs and dotted rings filling the head, ears, trunk and legs. The linework is crisp and dense, with solid black areas creating contrast against the lighter grey-toned skin. The design fills the frame centrally against a pale background, with the skin's natural texture visible around it.

Blackwork Geometric Thigh Elephant Mandala Floral Dot Teardrop Geometric pattern

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dear Mags,

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The elephant is finished, though Mr Dunmore still wants the trunk turned the other way so it looks like it is leaving the dance floor rather than arriving on it. I have told him an elephant does not care which way it faces once the band starts. He does not believe me. I have spent four nights on a ladder above the sprung floor of the Palais with a tin of gloss and a pot of ink, copying the pattern from the Bhuj shawl Mrs Achterberg lent me. Circle inside circle, petals inside the circles, and every ring has a dot at its edge like a row of sequins somebody dropped.

The head took the longest. I started at the forehead with a teardrop, the same shape as the seed in the cushion you bought me at the market, and the shapes kept coming until I was no longer drawing an elephant at all but a sort of map of rooms. By Thursday the ears were spreading over the proscenium arch like two great lace fans, and the old doorman stood underneath with his cap in both hands and said nothing for a full minute.

Then the lights went down on Saturday and the first waltz began, and I climbed down to watch from the balcony. Nobody looked up. They danced in the shadow of that enormous grey head, turning and turning beneath the rings, and I understood then that the pattern was never meant to be seen whole from the floor. You only see it from above, which is where I was, and where I suppose the elephant has always been looking from.

Come on Sunday and I will show you. Bring the good scissors, I have a hem to finish.

Yours, Ida