Black and grey dotwork tattoo of poppies and a mandala ornament on the outer thigh of a person wearing purple underwear.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Poppy and mandala on the thigh

Dotwork · Thigh · Black and grey · Photo

A large mandala-style design of poppy flowers sits on the outer thigh, with the petals and ornamental layers built up from fine linework and stippled dotwork. The shading moves from dense black at the centre to lighter grey toward the edges, giving the flowers depth. The composition is symmetrical and diamond shaped, with the design filling most of the thigh.

Dotwork Botanical Geometric Thigh Poppy Mandala Flower Ornament Petal

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

Sit closer, and mind the brazier, it spits when the wind comes over the saddle. No, leave the tea, it's stewed and you'll thank me. Now. You've seen the pass from below, all that grey shale and the cairns stacked like bad teeth. Look at it from above, the way the eagles do, and it's a flower. The ridges are the petals, the bowl of the valley is the heart, and every dot on the screes is a stone somebody set down while they were waiting.

Keep reading

Tamsin Corrow came over that saddle in the year the snow stayed late. Her husband Aled had gone ahead with the mules and the salt, and she followed a day behind with the baby strapped to her chest and a sack of poppy seed she'd been given for a debt nobody remembered. She sowed it on the bare shelf below the col, because the ground there was the only thing that looked as tired as she was. Her neighbours said she was mad. The seed was for oil, not for the view.

She waited at the cairn for Aled three nights. On the fourth morning the first heads opened, big as a fist and the colour of a bruise going pale, and the wind carried the petals down into the cloud. When the mule train came through in autumn, nobody needed to ask where the cairn was. You could follow the red across the scree like a line of ink.

So when you cross tomorrow, keep the poppies on your left hand, and stop counting your steps. Count the stones instead. Every one of them is a day somebody waited for someone.