Black and grey geometric mandala tattoo with dotwork shading at the centre, placed in the middle of the upper back.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Mandala tattoo on upper back

Geometric · Back · Black and grey · Photo

A symmetrical mandala sits centrally on the upper back, built from a twelve-pointed outer star with layered petals and circles radiating from a dotted core. The linework is crisp and uniform in the outer rings, while the centre uses stippled dots to create soft shading. The image is black and white, with the wearer's bra straps and clasp visible at the bottom of the frame.

Geometric Dotwork Back Mandala Flower Geometric pattern Star Petal Circle

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dear Tom,

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Mr Okonedo has finally let me cut a piece of glass without his hand on my wrist. You'd have laughed. I spent three evenings on the cartoon for the north transept, drawing the rose on squared paper with the brass compasses your father left in the shop, and every time I reached the twelfth point the star came out lopsided, like a child's sun. He only leaned over my shoulder, tapped the paper where the arcs crossed, and said, "Start from the middle. The outside will forgive you."

So I started from the middle. The core is nothing but a ring of tiny holes where the compass point went down, dozens of them, each no wider than a pin. Mr Okonedo says the eye rests there before it wanders out to the petals. I pricked every one by lamplight until my eyes stung and the paper had gone soft at the edges.

The outer points took longer. Twelve of them, each with its little fan of petals, each petal bounded by a line I had to draw twice because the first was never quite true. By the Sunday I could see the whole thing turning whenever I blinked.

On Monday the master took ill in the yard and was carried home on a cart, and the commission is mine now, all eleven feet of it, to be leaded by Friday. I have cut the first panel from the centre outwards, as he told me. The dotted core is already in the glass, a hundred pinholes of light, and when I hold it up to the window the rest of the rose seems to be waiting for me to be brave enough to follow it.

Yours in haste, Sarah