Black ink mandala design drawn on pale paper, with a geometric star-like centre surrounded by ornate petal and scroll patterns, beside three red piping bags.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Radial mandala design drawn in black ink

Geometric · Black and grey · Flash

A symmetrical mandala design is drawn in black ink on pale paper, with a geometric star-like centre ringed by pointed petals, scrolls and dotted detailing. The linework is fine and even, built up with small dots and curls around the outer edge. Three red piping bags sit at the left edge of the frame, and the photo is taken from above on a dark wooden surface.

Geometric Mandala Star Petal Scroll Dot Floral motif Sketch

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The kitchen table was still covered in newspaper when Nan said the drawing had to be finished before the ink dried in the bags. Three paper cones sat on the windowsill like candles nobody meant to light, and I squeezed the first one until a thread of black came out, smelling of the jam jar it had been mixed in. Outside, the tip of the old tip was grassed over now, and the lorries that used to take the coal down the valley had stopped years ago.

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Dad had worked the Ffald seam at Cwm Ilan until the water came in, and after that he sat on the back step with his hands in his lap, not knowing what to do with them. Nan put a pencil in one of them and told him to draw the star. He drew it badly, eight points that wandered like a drunk man's route home, and she laughed until she had to sit down. So it was me who got the job, and I was careful, because she was watching me the way she watched the bread rise.

She would not use a ruler. She counted the points aloud as I made them, the way the shift boss used to count the tubs going up the incline, one, two, through to eight. Then the petals went out in rings, each row a little larger than the last, with curls at the ends and dots pressed in where the ink wanted to pool. Every time my hand wobbled she said, leave it, it will look like it was meant to.

When the last dot was down, she carried the paper to the back door and held it up against the grey light coming through the glass. The lines seemed to have been cut out of something hard. Eight points, she said, and not one of them crooked.