Black and grey dotwork mandala tattoo covering the elbow and upper arm of a person with their arm raised.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Mandala tattoo on the upper arm and elbow

Dotwork · Upper arm · Black and grey · Photo

A large, symmetrical mandala fills the elbow and upper arm, built from radiating petals, diamond shapes and a central star. The design combines fine linework with dense stippled dotwork that creates shading across the petals and background. The image is in black and grey only, and the tattoo is framed against a dark background with the arm raised toward the top of the frame.

Dotwork Geometric Upper arm Mandala Star Petal Diamond 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

The lamplighter of Saltmere walked nine streets each night with a brass pole and a tin of oil. At the corner of Fenwick Lane the iron post had stood dark since the flood, and every night he stopped beside it, set down his pole and waited until the bells of St Oswin's had finished striking eleven. Then he took a disc of metal no bigger than a farthing from his coat and turned it slowly in the lamp glass where a flame should have been.

Keep reading

The people of the lane said he was mad. A man who talked to a dead post was no use to anyone, the rent collector said. But Mrs Hale, who sold pins from the corner shop, had a son who went out in the fog one winter and did not come home. She told nobody that she had seen the Fenwick Lane lamp burn one night in a strange clear way, a star of light laid out inside the diamond panes, with white petals running from its centre to the edges of the pavement, so that a boy lost in the murk could follow them home.

The lamplighter died in the spring. When they cleared his room above the chandler's they found the disc was not brass but pierced tin, pricked all over with holes as fine as lace, and on its back nine petals drawn in ink. Nobody could say how he had made the light, only that the lane's lamp was lit on foggy nights for years afterwards, and always from within.

Children who lose their way in Fenwick Lane are still told to count the points of light in the glass. There are thirty-two, the old ones say. Start at the star in the middle and walk outwards, and the pavement will bring you to your own front door.