Black and grey ornate floral mandala tattoo covering the upper arm and shoulder, with fine linework and dotted shading.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Ornate floral mandala on upper arm and shoulder

Botanical · Upper arm · Black and grey · Photo

A large ornamental tattoo covers the upper arm and reaches onto the shoulder, built from a central floral medallion surrounded by lace-like scrolls and repeating motifs. The design uses fine black linework with dotted and stippled fill that gives the pattern depth. The tattoo is shown in black and grey against a dark top and a dark leather chair, with the arm photographed at a slight angle.

Botanical Dotwork Upper arm Shoulder Mandala Flower Lace Ornament Scroll Pattern

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 wind had worked through the byre door again by the time Ilse found the pricking card under the flour sack, its holes gone soft and grey with age. Her grandmother had punched every one of them with a pin the length of a finger, following a rose drawn in her own hand, and Ilse had never once got the centre to close. Outside, the gulls were fighting over fish guts at the slip, and the lamp smoked whenever she breathed too near it.

Keep reading

The lace had to be finished before the boat came in on Thursday. Mrs Garvie on the mainland had ordered a collar for her daughter's wedding, forty bobbins clicking in a rhythm Ilse could hear even in her sleep, and the medallion at the centre of the pattern kept wanting to spill out of its frame. She set the pins one by one. Each time the thread crossed over and under, a small dark hole opened in the card, the way a stitch gives way in a sleeve when you tug it too hard.

Near midnight she gave up on the old rose and pricked a new one from memory, a flower with a scroll curling off each petal like a fern unrolling. Her grandmother's voice came back to her, saying a lace-maker should never trust a pattern she has not broken once. So she let the thread run wrong at the edge, let a loop slip, and watched the scroll take the mistake and turn it into a leaf.

By morning the collar lay across the table, pale as milk, and the card beside it was more holes than paper. Ilse pinned the finished piece to the washing line, where it snapped and bellied in the wind like a sail, and she left the old rose in the drawer for whoever came after her to find.