Black ink Om symbol inside a lotus mandala tattoo on the nape of the neck, in a blackwork and botanical style.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Om symbol within a lotus mandala

Blackwork · Neck · Black and grey · Photo

The tattoo shows the Om symbol in bold solid black at the centre, surrounded by a ring of small dots and a border of layered lotus petals. The linework is crisp and even, with the Om filled in and the petals outlined and partly shaded. The design is in black ink only and sits centred in the frame against plain skin, with dark hair visible at the top edge.

Blackwork Botanical Neck Om Lotus Mandala Symbol Petal Dot

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 lamplighter of Corrimar walked the same eleven streets every night, and every night a grey dog followed him as far as the tannery steps. Nobody owned the dog. It had a pale ring of fur at its neck, as if a collar had been taken off long ago and never replaced.

Keep reading

One wet night in the month of frost, the lamplighter found a brass bowl on the bridge over the Ness, filled with water so still it held the moon whole. Floating in it was a lotus cut from tin, its petals folded tight, and at its centre a single mark that hummed when he looked at it, low as a cart on cobbles.

He carried the bowl home and set it on the sill above the stairs. Each night the hum grew, and each night the city went quieter, until the carters stopped cursing their horses and the gulls sat on the chimneys without crying. The old woman on the ground floor said the mark was the sound the city made before it was built, and that a thing once heard could not be unheard.

On the last night of frost he lit the lamps as usual, then stood on the bridge and let the hum fill his chest. The tin petals opened one by one, and the lamps along the Ness burned without oil. In the morning the bowl was empty, and the lamplighter's breath came out in a slow, low note that all of Corrimar heard, and slept through.