Black ink drawing of two moths above a circular mandala of flowers and leaves, in a dotwork and linework style, shown as a tattoo design on paper.

Moths and mandala with flowers in black ink

Dotwork · Black and grey · Flash

A black ink drawing on white paper shows two moths, one with dotted wing shading, placed above a circular mandala. The mandala is built from five-petalled flowers, leaves and a central geometric star inside a rope-like border. Fine linework and stippled dot shading are used throughout, with the composition centred and the pen lying across the top edge.

Dotwork Botanical Geometric Moth Butterfly Mandala Flower Leaf Star

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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

Sit down, the lot of you, and stop fidgeting with your spoons, for this is a wedding story and it wants your ears. Mind the candles. My mother told it to me the winter the chapel roof leaked, and she had it from a woman who sold ribbon at Thornby market, so take it as true or as trimmed as you like.

Keep reading

Two moths came to the window of a girl called Hester Pell the night before her wedding. The one was dun and soft as a dust-cloth, with a pair of round eyes on its wings like spectacles someone had forgotten to wipe. The other was banded like a bramble-bee and had the patience of a clerk. Neither of them flew at the lamp. They sat on the sill and turned slowly, as if they were reading the room, and Hester, who had never once in nineteen years kept still, sat down beside them and kept still.

In the morning her intended, a joiner named Amos Kell, found the ring she had been stitching for the altar cloth laid out on the flagstones. Marigolds and sweet william sat round a little star of knotted cord, every petal worked twice and every rope-edge pulled tight. She had been up till dawn. The moths had gone, but two pale dust-prints lay on the linen where they had rested, and the minister swore the marks were exactly the shape of two wings held open side by side.

So when your own feast is cold and the fiddler has had one too many, go and look at the window. If two moths are sat on the sill, you will know the ring is holding, and you may stop worrying about the soup.