Black and grey dotwork sleeve tattoo of mandalas, flowers and paisley scrollwork covering the shoulder and upper arm on both arms.

Ornamental mandala sleeve on both arms

Dotwork · Shoulder · Black and grey · Photo

The image shows two arms, each covered by a full ornamental sleeve from the shoulder down toward the elbow, with the torso cropped out of frame. The design combines mandala-style flowers, paisley shapes, spiral scrollwork and fine dotted shading in black and grey. Fine linework defines the petals and borders, and the dotwork gives the shading a soft, textured look across both arms.

Dotwork Geometric Botanical Shoulder Upper arm Forearm Mandala Flower Paisley Swirl Ornament Sleeve

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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

Mags had pricked the same sheet of tracing paper for three weeks, and her fingers had gone numb around the needle. Every dot was a hole the size of a pin's head, set a finger's width from the next, so that when she laid the paper over a bolt of cloth and rubbed charcoal through it, the mandala would appear in a fine grey dust. Her father had worked this way in the print room off Brick Lane, and his father before him, and nobody in the family had used a machine for the dots if they could help it.

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The commission had come from a Mrs Adeyemi-Lowe, who wanted a curtain for the front room of a house in Stoke Newington, with paisley down the edges and a flower at the centre that looked as though it had been dropped there by accident. She had sent a photograph of a tea caddy and a note asking for the swirls to be tighter than the ones in the shop catalogue. Mags had not told her that the tight swirls were the hardest, because the needle wanted to wander.

On the last Friday she finished the centre flower and found that she had pricked the second ring twice, sitting a hair off the first. She stood with the paper against the window for a long time. Then she dusted it anyway, and when she lifted the stencil the two rings made a shimmer, like a flower moving under water.

Mrs Adeyemi-Lowe liked it. She said the curtain looked older than it was.