Four-panel photo of a bald person with black peony and mandala tattoos covering the scalp, neck, shoulders and upper chest, in a blackwork and dotwork style.

Peony and mandala tattoo across scalp, neck and back

Blackwork · Neck · Black and grey · Photo

The four panels show the same person from the back, front and sides, with a large peony flower on the scalp framed by ornamental mandala patterns. The neck carries a stylised lotus-like motif with droplet shapes, and the shoulders and upper chest have lace-like mandala ornaments. The work is built from solid black linework and fine dotwork shading on pale skin, with no colour ink, and the compositions are shot against a dark grey backdrop.

Blackwork Dotwork Botanical Neck Back Shoulder Chest Other Peony Lotus Mandala Neck Shoulder Ornament Dot Flower

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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

Dear Ines, the snow came down the Harrow Gill road again on Tuesday, so I have had the stove lit for three days and nothing to do but walk the wall and count the dots in the ledger. You will laugh, but I counted the stones by the spring as well. Four hundred and twelve. Your uncle says the old ledger lied and there were never so many, but I know what I counted.

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The peonies came up under the eaves of the hut the week before the thaw, which is wrong, because peonies do not grow at three thousand feet and never have. Yet there they were, pale heads pushing through the grit, each petal ringed with the fine stitching the carters admire. The lads from the lower village came up to see them. Mrs Oakes brought her embroidery frame and sat out in the wind copying them, and she said the lace round the edges looked like frost that had decided to be polite.

Sometimes I think the pass is only a lid on a pot of water, and the flowers are what the water wants to say. The drops that gather on the lotus leaves at dawn run down into the spring, and the spring runs down to the valley where your mother is. I have been trying to write that plainly for a month. The best I can manage is this: come home before the pass closes, and bring the frame.