Black linework full sleeve of interlocking mandala, paisley and flower motifs covering a woman's arm from forearm to upper arm.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Ornamental mandala sleeve on a raised arm

Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

A full sleeve of black ornamental linework covers the arm, built from mandala medallions, paisley-like petals, scrolls and small flowers. Fine and bold lines are combined with dotted accents, and the shading is soft grey in places with no colour ink. The arm is raised diagonally across a plain white top against a pale wall, so the design fills most of the frame.

Forearm Upper arm Mandala Paisley Flower Ornament Scrollwork Sleeve

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The paper ran out in the March of the strike, so you take a stub of candle and draw on the whitewash of the back kitchen instead. Your mother says the wall will never forgive you. Your father comes in from the gate at Hollin Pit with his cap in his hands, looks at the chalk lines above the range, and says nothing, which you have learned is how he says he likes a thing.

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You start with one medallion, a ring of petals no bigger than a saucer, copied from the shawl your nan carried up from Glasgow in a tin trunk. Paisley curls come next, the teardrops that turn back on themselves like a wave changing its mind. You work by the window light, pressing hard so the line holds, and by the second week the pattern has left the range behind and is crawling down toward the flagged floor, the scrolls following the damp line where the wall meets the slate.

The men come in for their tea and stop talking when they see it. Mrs Gallagher from number nine sets a dish of blackcurrant jam on the table without a word, her eyes on the flowers, not on you. The deputy's wife asks who taught you, and you tell her the wall did. She laughs, then stops laughing, because she has seen the second medallion and knows it is not a thing a girl can learn from a book.

When the strike ends the coal goes back down the shaft and the whitewash is scrubbed for the landlord's man. You wet the cloth and hesitate over the last flower, a small one in the bottom corner near the skirting. You leave it. Somebody will have to crouch and look for it when the lamp is low, and you want them to have to work for it.