Black and grey dotwork mandala tattoo with lotus-like petals and geometric patterns covering the inner forearm.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Mandala tattoo on a forearm

Dotwork · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

A large mandala design covers the forearm, built from symmetrical petals, lotus-like motifs, circles and dotted geometric lattices. The work uses fine stippling and dotwork for shading, with bold black outlines and areas of solid black fill. The tattoo is shown in black and grey against a white textured wall, with a dark top and jeans visible at the edge of the frame.

Dotwork Geometric Forearm Mandala Lotus Petal Circle Dot Pattern

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

Nanda had counted the dots three times before the master noticed her lips moving. Lotus petals spread outward from the centre in eight rings, each one pricked into the limestone with a copper point and a light mallet, and every petal had to match the one opposite it to the width of a barley grain. Master Vidya had carved this circle into the temple's east threshold for nineteen years and had never let anyone else set the outer lattice.

Keep reading

"You are counting the wrong thing," he said, lowering himself onto the warm stone beside her. "The dots are not the pattern. The spaces between them are." He pressed his thumb into a hollow near the rim where no point had gone. "My father left this one open. Everyone asks why."

"Why?"

"So the eye has somewhere to rest while it walks inward." He would say nothing more. That evening she sat with the chisel until the lamps guttered, testing each gap with a knotted cord. The cord came back exact every time, as though the circle had been measured by something that never slept. She set her final point in the lattice, a small bright star at the edge of the cut, and left the centre bare for the monsoon to fill.

In the morning the basin in the middle held a perfect ring of sky, and the master, who had seen it first, walked around the threshold twice without speaking.