Mandala flower tattoo on the side of the torso
Botanical · Ribs · Black and grey · Photo
A layered mandala flower sits on the side of the torso, with a dotted centre and rings of pointed petals. The outlines are fine and dark, and several petals are shaded with soft grey gradients. The design is shown in close focus against plain, pale skin with soft natural light.
Find an artist for thisTake 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 closer, child, the fire has nothing left to say to us. You want to know why the old wall in the lower cloister has a flower on it, and why Brother Anselm will not let the boys scrub it. Listen, then.
Keep reading
When the roof leaked in the year the bell cracked, the abbot sent Pemba up the ladder with a pot of lamp-black and a length of cord. He was twelve and afraid of heights, so the cord was his only friend. One end he tied to a nail in the mortar at the centre, and the other to a stick of charcoal. Round and round he walked, and the cord drew a ring, and inside the ring he marked the dots, one for every breath he had held that morning.
The petals took the whole winter. Each one was a day the snow kept the lower road shut and nobody came up the mountain with news of the valley. He shaded them with his thumb, soft at the edges, darkest where the light from the window never reached. By spring he had nineteen rings and a face on the wall that looked, the cook said, like someone waiting to be asked a question.
Brother Anselm came to see it on the first warm morning. He stood a long while, then pressed his own finger to the nail-hole in the centre and said the nail was the only part of the flower that did not move. Everything else turns, he said, and you must turn with it, and the dots are where you stood.
More like this
From the plentytattoo archive, uploaded by a user. Is this your work? Ask for credit or removal.