Two side-by-side photos: a black fine-line mandala tattoo on a shoulder, and black silhouettes of flying figures tattooed behind an ear.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Mandala on shoulder and silhouettes behind ear

Blackwork · Shoulder · Black and grey · Photo

The left photo shows a large, symmetrical black mandala with dense lace-like linework and dotted detail spreading across a shoulder and upper back. The right photo shows a close view of an ear and the neck behind it, with small black silhouettes of flying figures and a tiny star-like mark in solid black ink. Both tattoos are in black ink only, shown against plain skin.

Blackwork Geometric Shoulder Neck Mandala Lace pattern Silhouette Flying figure Star Ear

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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

Hush now, and mind the kettle, because this is the part where the wind comes round the headland and nobody sleeps. My gran told me this on Scarrow, the little island past the ferry bend, where there were four hundred souls and one lamp that never went out. The lamp was only kept lit because Mairi Gunn could not abide the dark, and she was the keeper's wife, so the dark had no say in it.

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On the nights the stars came down low over the north skerry, the children of the island would climb to the lamp-room window and leap, arms out, and the sea wind would catch them and lift them over the water like gulls. Tam Mackie went first, then the Ross twins, then a little one from the Manse who was too young to know he should be frightened. Each of them left a shadow behind on the wet stones of the pier, small and dark and exactly their shape. In the morning the shadows were gone, and the children were not in their beds.

Isla Gunn, the keeper's daughter, was the last one left, and she stood at that window with her toes over the sill while her mother held the back of her jumper with both fists. Mairi did not shout. She told Isla that the wind was a liar and the stars were only lamps somebody else had forgotten to put out. Isla stayed. The shadows came back to the pier that night and waited, and they are waiting still. If you walk out to the headland on a still evening, you will see them over the water, small and dark against the light, going round and round the lamp like moths. Don't call them in. They know the way home, and the lamp is kept lit for that.