Forearm with a dense black and grey geometric mandala tattoo, with diamond and star motifs, in front of a wall of mandala and floral drawings.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Mandala forearm tattoo on a wall of designs

Geometric · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

A forearm shows a large mandala tattoo built from a central star, layered petals and diamond shapes, with fine and bold linework. The ink is mostly black and grey, with a faint reddish tint near the centre of the design. The forearm sits in the foreground against a wall covered in mandala drawings, a rose sketch, a portrait illustration and a photograph of a peacock.

Geometric Forearm Mandala Star Diamond Petal Ornament Rose Peacock Portrait

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

You have been drawing the same star for eleven winters, on the back of ledger paper in the wagon that smells of linseed and wet sawdust. The Halloran Brothers' Travelling Big Top has four elephants left, two of them ornamental, and a peacock named Duchess who now performs only when the rain holds off. Tonight the rain has not held off.

Keep reading

Mr Pell, the ringmaster, stands in the wings turning his hat in his hands. "They'll pay for the last of it, love, if the peacock opens," he says. You nod and pin the sketches to the canvas wall: a rose stem, a moth, the aerialist as a girl, and the mandala you drew the night your mother died, its petals going out and out like a tide that never reaches the shore.

Duchess hates the wet. You bring her a bowl of warm millet and wipe the blue of her neck with a cloth. She watches you with one gold eye, the same colour as the thread you used for the star. Beyond the flap, the crowd is stamping on the boards. You fan her tail out with both hands, and it unfurls behind her like the design you have been trying to finish all season, every eye in place, every petal sharp.

When the lights go up, the ring is empty except for the dripping canvas and one bright circle of sawdust. Duchess steps out anyway. The eyes on her tail catch the lamps, and for four minutes nobody in the seats mentions the rain. Afterwards Pell counts the takings in the wagon and says it will be enough to get them to Dorset. You do not tell him you have already drawn the star for the next town, though you have never once managed to finish one.