A mermaid silhouette filled with black mandala and scale patterns on a dark background, shaded pink to teal to blue, shown as a drawing rather than a tattoo on skin.

Mandala-patterned mermaid drawing

Colour · Flash

A mermaid figure with arms outstretched and a curling tail is drawn as an outline filled with intricate black mandala, paisley and scale patterns. The linework is fine and dense, and the outline is shaded with a gradient from pink at the hair to teal at the waist and pale blue at the tail, set against a near-black background. The figure fills the tall, narrow frame with the head at the top and the tail curling towards the bottom right.

Mermaid Mandala Pattern Scale Hair Tail

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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

Dear Odile, the tide came in over the lower steps again last night, and I sat up with the lamp because the sea was making that low humming it does before it wants something. I think it wanted the old cable. The engineers from the mainland never came back about the relay, so I have been mending things with wire from the store cupboard and the copper pins you left in the drawer. The wind has got into the ledger too, and half the pages are stuck together with salt.

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Yesterday I found the carved tiles under the tide line, the ones with the spiralling patterns that look like lace from a distance. I brought one up in my coat. Every curl on it is a little door, Odile, and every door has a smaller door inside it, and when I traced one with my thumb the grooves seemed to go on past the stone. The woman in the harbour office laughed and said the sea had been writing on the rocks for longer than there had been anyone to read it. She still charged me a bottle of gin for the look of it.

I have stood the tile on the sill where your geranium used to sit. When the lamp swings round it throws the pattern across the far wall, pink at the edges where the glass is tinted, then teal, then a pale blue that fades into the dark. It looks like something swimming upward through the plaster. I wanted you to see it before the next supply boat, in case it is still there when you come back. Light the lamp for me at dusk if you can. The wire will hold until spring, and so will I.