Dark brown and grey paisley mandala tattoo with a blank central circle, inked on the inner forearm in a fine dotted style.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Paisley mandala on a forearm

Forearm · Mixed · Photo

A circular mandala of paisley-shaped petals surrounds an empty central ring of bare skin, with dotted borders and fine interior detailing. The linework is dark brown-grey with some reddish-brown tones at the petal tips and ring edges. The design is centred on the forearm against a green glittery surface, with the tattoo filling most of the frame.

Forearm Mandala Paisley Ring Dot Floral 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

Every night the cook of the Hollin Mary set his copper stockpot on the galley hob, and every night the ship's boy asked him the same thing. Why leave a hole in the middle of a pot? Nan Tillery had taught him to hammer that pattern into the rim, petal after petal, the teardrop shapes curling out from the ring like fern heads, and she had told him to leave the centre bare for whatever the sea might one day give back.

Keep reading

The boy thought it was an old wives' notion until the spring the Hollin Mary ran into fog off the Skerries. Her mate, a gangling lad called Ewan Dunn, went over the side while they hauled the jib, and the sea kept him for nine days. On the tenth morning the cook found a plain brass ring wedged in the grating of the scullery drain, the one Ewan had lost to a card game and never bought back from the men who won it.

He dried it on his apron, set it in the empty middle of the pot, and filled the pot with barley water for the men's supper. The ring sat there exactly, as if the pattern had been waiting for it all along.

The boy stopped asking after that. The cook kept scrubbing the rim every night, but he never once touched the centre, which was the only part of the pot that never needed scrubbing.