Black and grey pen drawing of a geometric mandala design with a flower of life centre, moon phases and dotwork arrows, shown on paper with no body placement.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Mandala with flower of life and moon phases

Geometric · Black and grey · Flash

A pen drawing on cream paper of a circular mandala with a flower of life pattern at its centre. Eight lotus-like petals and a ring of moon phases surround the centre, with fine dotwork and small arrow shapes radiating outwards. The work uses fine black linework, stippling and shading on the moons, with no colour.

Geometric Dotwork Mandala Flower of life Moon phase Moon Lotus Dot Arrow Geometric 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 lamp room at Hollin Pit smells of paraffin and wet wool, and the almanac pinned beside the tally board says the moon will be gone by Thursday. You have been reading it aloud for your father since his left hand stopped closing, and you know the columns better than the overman does. Dark of the moon means the night shift goes down with one lamp between two men, and nobody likes that.

Keep reading

On the back of a spoiled tally sheet you draw what your gran drew for you on the chapel steps when you were small: a ring of overlapping circles, six around one, every line meeting another. Then, because the sheet has room, you add a second ring of moons, new, waxing, full, waning, each one shaded with a nib that spits. Small arrows fan out at the edge, pointing at nothing you can name. Mr Tolley catches you at it and holds the sheet to the bulb. "What's that supposed to be?" he says. You tell him it's the moon's timetable. He says the moon doesn't own a shift, and pins the paper back on the board anyway.

On Thursday the cage drops into the black with fourteen men and a single lamp swinging at the front. Somewhere past the first junction the air goes still and the hiss of the pumps falls away. You fold your drawing into your cap, where it has been all morning, and you think of the rings and how the dark keeps its own count. Above you, the moon is a thin paring over the spoil heap. Nobody on the cage is looking up at it, because you have already shown them where it is.