Black ink mandala drawing of a lotus-like flower on cream paper, with a flat, detailed dotwork and geometric pattern, shown beside two black marker pens.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Mandala flower drawn in black ink

Geometric · Black and grey · Flash

A symmetrical mandala drawn in black ink on cream paper, shaped like an eight-petalled flower with a dense central medallion. The petals are filled with dots, concentric curves, teardrops, triangles and small hearts arranged in repeating bands. Only black ink is used, with the outlined petals standing out against the pale background, and two black marker pens sit at the top left of the frame.

Geometric Dotwork Mandala Flower Lotus Pattern Medallion Petal

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The frost came in the second week of May, which Dad said was the sort of thing that happened when you ordered seed from a man called Pritchard. I was on the potting bench with the order book open and nothing to do but wait for the glass to clear, so I started drawing in the margin of a delivery note, the way I used to on the back of school jotters.

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I began in the middle, where you're meant to begin, with a small coil like a snail shell, then ringed it with dots until the dots became a crowd. Each petal grew out from the one before it. I gave the outer ones little teardrops, like rain that had decided against falling, and I put hearts in the widest petals because Nan always said a heart was just a triangle that had been kind to someone. The paper was cheap and thin enough to show the bench through it, so I worked slowly, pressing hard enough to keep the lines black.

By noon the frost had lifted off the lettuce beds in a grey steam, and Dad came in with his cap in his hands, saw the drawing and stood there longer than I expected. 'You've made a lotus,' he said. 'Eight petals. Your nan had the same number in her kitchen tiles.' I hadn't known that. I had only been drawing what the page wanted.

He asked if I'd keep it. I said it wasn't finished, and he said nothing in a garden ever was, and that was rather the point. I pinned it to the shed door beside the frost calendar. When the sun came round the next morning the paper had curled a little at the edges, and the flower looked as if it was opening.