Black ink mandala tattoo in a blackwork style wrapping from the ankle across the top of the foot, with paisley and leaf motifs.

Ornamental mandala tattoo on ankle and foot

Blackwork · Ankle · Black and grey · Photo

A large ornamental design of paisley-like teardrops, scalloped borders, leaf sprigs and a small flower motif runs up the lower leg and across the top of the foot. The bold, even black linework is filled with fine hatched and patterned detail, and the ink is solid black with no colour. The photograph is taken at an angle against a dark background, with the foot resting on a white towel.

Blackwork Ankle Other Mandala Paisley Leaves Floral motif Flower Teardrop Lace pattern Ornamental

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

Teodora had been told the lace on the bulkhead was decoration, something the first crew had left to keep their hands busy through the long dark. She had her doubts. Every teardrop curled toward the same seam, and every scalloped border closed like a hatch when she traced it with a fingertip.

Keep reading

Her grandmother had kept the old inks in a biscuit tin with a lighthouse printed on the lid. On the night the lamps in the spine failed, Teodora sat on the cold deck of the seed vault with a stylus and a sheet of recycled foil, copying the pattern one leaf at a time. The sprigs ran in pairs, the small flower sat at every fourth node, and the teardrops pointed like needles toward the drive ring.

By the third shift her hands shook, and the foil had filled with fine black hatching that looked less like ornament and more like a route. Her cousin Anselm laughed at her until she laid the copy over the bulkhead plate and the lines matched the coolant channels, each lace point marking a valve that had been sealed since launch.

She opened the first valve with the brass key from the tin. Cold air came out smelling of rain that had never fallen here. Anselm stopped laughing. Teodora wiped the foil on her sleeve and began copying the next border, because the pattern carried on past the drive ring, and she wanted to see where it ended.