Pen drawing of an ornate lotus flower design with swirls, dots and circles on white paper, beside a black mechanical pencil, shown as a tattoo design rather than on skin.

Ornate lotus flower design drawing

Botanical · Black and grey · Flash

A hand-drawn design of a lotus flower with layered petals filled with swirls, dots and small circles, topped by a curling flourish and ending in a stacked column of circles. The linework is black ink with some pencil shading in the petals, and the design is shown on plain white paper beside a black mechanical pencil. The image is in black and grey only, with a centred, symmetrical composition.

Botanical Lotus Flower Swirl Dot Circle Flourish Design

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dear Ivy,

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The workman who came to mend the ballroom ceiling spent three days on a ladder above the stage. On his last afternoon he climbed down with plaster in his hair and showed Mr Hartley a drawing on the back of a ration book. It was a flower, he said, the sort they grow on ponds in the east, and he wanted it cut into the plaster rose above the bandstand. Mr Hartley said the Corporation would never pay for petals. The man only laughed and said he'd take his wages in dance tickets.

I watched him work from the cloakroom hatch. He drew the whole thing first in the dust of the stage, petals layered like a stack of tin plates, a curl inside each one like a fern unfurling, dots scattered across them the way sequins catch the light. At the bottom he let a column of little rings run down, one beneath another, as if someone had dropped stones into still water and the ripples had stayed.

On Saturday the hall was packed for the harvest dance, and when the lights dropped for the last waltz the bulbs threw shadows through the new bloom so every dot looked like a pinhole in the ceiling. For a moment I thought the whole thing might open and let the sky in. Stanley from the bakery asked me to dance, and I said yes with my coat still half off my shoulders.

The workman left before the paint was dry. Under the hatch I found his pencil, sharpened to a needle, and the lowest ring on the stage floor was unfinished, a circle with one small gap, as though he meant to come back and close it. I've tucked the pencil in my apron pocket. Write when you can, and tell me whether the sea is as grey there as your last postcard made it look.

Love, Peg