Black and grey dotwork mandala tattoo covering the shoulder blade and upper arm of a person photographed from behind.

Mandala tattoo across shoulder and upper arm

Dotwork · Shoulder · Black and grey · Photo

A large, radially symmetrical mandala covers the shoulder blade and extends down the upper arm, with a second geometric panel on the arm below it. The design is built from dense dots and fine stippled rings, with solid black petals and spokes creating strong contrast against the skin. The black and white photograph is framed from behind, with the tattoo as the clear focus against a plain wall and a patterned panel at the right edge.

Dotwork Blackwork Geometric Shoulder Upper arm Back Mandala Geometric pattern Sunburst Dot Lattice

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The lamp at Skerrow Head had burned the same way for ninety years, and the old keepers said that was the trouble. Its great lens was ringed like a spider's web, each prism cut to throw the light out in a spoke, and when the wind came off the Minch it sang through the gaps between the glass. Tam Ferrier went up the iron stair with a bucket of paraffin and a rag, and his grandmother called after him to count the rings as he polished them.

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He counted them in the dark, his fingers on the cold brass. Nine rings, then eleven, then a ring of small dots where the old makers had punched the brass, one dot for every fisherman lost off the point. He found that the twelfth ring was missing. In its place was a hollow the shape of a hand, and when he laid his palm in it the lamp dimmed to a single spoke of gold that pointed inland, towards the village, where his mother had not come home from the fish market.

Tam did not know the rhyme his grandmother used, so he made up his own and muttered it through the rag: count the spokes, count the dots, keep the light where the road is lost. He polished until the rings shone like frost on a wheel, and the beam swung out and out until it found a lantern bobbing on the moor road, held up by a woman walking home slowly in the rain.

In the morning the lens was whole again, and the hollow was filled with a plain brass button, warm to the touch. Tam kept it in his pocket for the rest of his life. When the sea ran high he said the rhyme under his breath, and every keeper after him swore the light turned its face towards whoever was out late.