Black and grey dotwork mandala with an animal face tattooed on the outer thigh, with a geometric blackwork sleeve on the forearm of a hand resting on a bare leg.

Mandala thigh tattoo with geometric forearm sleeve

Dotwork · Thigh · Black and grey · Photo

A bare-legged person lies on white bedding, showing a large mandala tattoo with an animal face on the outer thigh. The thigh piece uses fine dotwork and shading in black and grey, with radiating petals and symmetrical ornament, while a geometric blackwork sleeve runs down the forearm of the hand resting on the leg. A small cross is tattooed on the back of the hand and the nails are painted dark teal.

Dotwork Geometric Thigh Forearm Hand Mandala Geometric pattern Cross Sleeve

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The fair leaves at dawn, so the panel has to be finished tonight, and Mrs Oake has left you alone with the lion. It sits on the wagon's side where the lamplight catches it: a broad, sorrowful face, its mane built from thousands of tiny black dots, its brow sliding into a mandala of stacked petals that spreads down the panel like a sunflower turned to stone. Every petal is ringed with a fine line of ink. You were told the pattern takes a year to learn and a lifetime to repeat.

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The geometry runs round the rail in a border of stars inside stars, interlocking triangles that meet at the corners as if the carpenter wanted to trap something in. Mrs Oake calls it the fence. She says the lion keeps the fence closed. You are only meant to paint the last petal, the one at the very centre, but when you reach for the fine brush your hand shakes and you lay down a dot instead of a petal, then another, and the dots begin to crawl toward the lion's open eye.

The eye is still blank. You have been careful not to finish it. Mrs Oake told you the lion would choose its own colour, and you laugh at that until you dip the brush and the black sinks into the wood without a stroke from you. The eye fills and the lion lifts its head. Outside, the generators cough and the rides go quiet one by one, and the lion watches the road you will take in the morning.

By dawn the wagon is gone down the lane and the panel faces the hedgerow, but the lion's gaze is fixed on the gate where you stand, as though it has already decided you will follow.