Black and grey dotwork mandala with a central Om symbol and curved horn shapes, tattooed across a man's upper arm and shoulder.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Om mandala on upper arm

Dotwork · Upper arm · Black and grey · Photo

A large black and grey tattoo covers the upper arm and shoulder, centred on a circular Om symbol set within a layered lotus-style mandala. Fine dots and linework build up the petals, curved horn-like shapes and small hanging motif, with shading giving depth to the design. The photograph is taken at an angle against an orange wall, with other tattoo images visible in the background.

Dotwork Geometric Upper arm Shoulder Om symbol Mandala Lotus Horn Circle

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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 kettle's only just gone off and the stairs will keep. You'll want to hear about the room at the top, the one with the sea view and the damp in the corner shaped like a map of nowhere. Nobody's paid for it since the summer of 1961, and I've never had the heart to let it to anyone who didn't ask me first.

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The man who took it was Mr Anand Iyer, though he said to call him Anand. He came off the Hastings train with one suitcase, a box of brass bowls wrapped in newspaper, and a stack of drawings done on the backs of tea-shop bills. Every drawing was a flower, and every flower had a circle at its heart with a little curl inside, like a sleeping snail. I asked him what it meant. He said it was the sound the world makes before it starts, and easier to say than to explain. Then he said it, low, and the whole landing hummed like a struck bell. I never asked again.

He spent his days on the shingle with a sketchbook and a tin of charcoal, drawing the groynes and gulls, always returning to the same lotus, petal on petal, each one sharper than the last. The sea came in grey and went out silver, and he dotted the paper with a sharpened nib until his fingers were black to the knuckle. Mrs Pell next door thought he was a spy. I think he was only trying to make a shape hold still long enough to finish it.

On his last morning the window was furred with salt, and somebody had breathed on the glass. In the wet of it was a circle, drawn with one finger, and inside it the curl. He caught the nine o'clock train with his bowls, and I swept the room and aired it. The circle lasted a minute, no more, before the radiator warmed the glass and it was gone, and I found I didn't mind at all.