Black ink mandala-style floral tattoo on the side of a person's ribs, with fine detailed linework above denim shorts.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Mandala floral tattoo on ribs

Botanical · Ribs · Black and grey · Photo

A black ink floral mandala sits on the side of the torso, built from a central flower with layered petals, curling vine-like stems and dotted ornamental detail. The fine, dense linework and stippled shading are rendered in black and grey with no colour. The tattoo is centred on the ribcage and framed by bare skin above the waistband of light blue denim shorts, with a patterned bedspread visible at the right edge.

Botanical Geometric Ribs Mandala Flower Floral ornament Leaves Vine Dot

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

The ink had thickened in the bottle, so Nell thinned it with a drop of tea from the pot on the range and kept one eye on the clock over the mantel. Her husband's shift ended at six. The lamp-room door would bang at ten to, and the men would come up the lane in a grey line, coughing, and she wanted the flower finished before the kettle boiled over.

Keep reading

She had started at the centre, as her mother had taught her with the crochet hook: one small circle, then a ring of petals, each one pointed and then curled back on itself like a fern unrolling. Over the top she let the vine run, a thin stem that wandered off the edge of the whitewash and came back, bearing little leaves she didn't need to think about. Her hand knew the shape of it. The dots were harder. Each one had to be the same size, or the whole thing looked like a rash, Mrs Dodds across the street had said, and Nell had not forgiven her.

The wheel above the pit gave its first groan at ten to six, a sound she felt in her back teeth before she heard it. She dipped the nib again. Outside, a dog barked, then a whistle, then boots on the setts. She counted dots under her breath, eleven, twelve, and the flower spread across the wall beside the cupboard where the wedding plates sat, black and fine against the lime.

When the back gate clicked she was at the last petal. She set the nib in the pot and wiped her fingers on her apron, and by the time the latch lifted and Tom ducked under the lintel with his lamp still hung on his cap, the room smelled of tea and iron. He looked at the wall for a long time. Then he laid his black palm over the centre, carefully, the way you would touch something that might still be wet, and when he lifted it away the flower had a dark hand printed at its heart. She found she did not mind.