Black and grey tattoo of a seated schnauzer filled with mandala and paisley patterns on the side of the ribs.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Mandala-filled schnauzer on the side ribs

Ribs · Black and grey · Photo

A seated schnauzer-style dog is outlined in solid black linework and filled with dense mandala, paisley and floral ornament. The ornament is drawn in fine black lines with no shading, giving a flat, patterned look. The tattoo sits against plain skin, with fingers visible at the top left edge of the frame.

Ribs Dog Mandala Paisley Floral

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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, sit down, the tea's still hot in the flask. You'll not find a better bench than this one outside the Halfway Garage, not with the sun going down over the mesa like a split yolk. Now, the dog. You'll have seen the grey one lying by the pump? No, he's gone round the back. Anyway. His name was Tuck, and he came up the Mesa Road in the back of a rag-and-bone van, belonging to nobody but the wind.

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Ada Feeney was the one who painted him. She had a steel needle, a pot of soot ink and a thing about lace. She drew his outline in one long night by the lamp, a seated dog with his ears up like two folded envelopes, and then she sat him on the cracked step and filled him in. A petal here, a teardrop curl there, a whole mandala across his ribs where a heart ought to be. It took her the whole of the dry season, and Tuck never once moved, not even for the lizards.

Then the council man came out with his surveyor's wheel to lay the new road straight through the Halfway. He stood at the foot of the step and told the dog he'd have to shift. Tuck did not shift. The man's eyes kept snagging on the patterns, following a paisley down into a flower and losing the road altogether. By dusk he had measured the same yard four times and driven home with a headache and a changed route.

So the road bends now, round the step. Mind you don't clip the bench on the way past. And if you see a grey dog sitting very upright at the bend, lift your hat to him. He's still counting the petals.