Black ink drawing of a radial mandala with dotwork shading and leaf and petal shapes, drawn on paper beside fineliner pens.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Radial mandala design in black ink

Dotwork · Black and grey · Flash

A symmetrical radial mandala drawn in black ink on paper, with a central floral medallion surrounded by layered rings of pointed petals, leaves and diamond shapes. The design is built from fine linework combined with stippled dotwork shading that gives the petals depth and texture. The artwork is in black and white only and fills the square sheet, with pens and a drawing surface visible at the edges.

Dotwork Geometric Mandala Flower Petal Leaves Diamond Pattern

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Edith had counted the dots for nine evenings before she admitted to herself that the number was wrong. The rose window of St Brannoc's had been broken since the storm of '52, and the parish wanted a true copy before the masons came over on the spring boat. She sat at the kitchen table with a fine nib and a jar of Indian ink, pricking the paper one speck at a time, the lamp hissing beside her and the sea knocking below the cliff path.

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Each ring of petals sat a little further out than the last, like the tide climbing a slipway. Her grandfather had kept the tide book on Harrowmere for forty years, marking the springs in the margins with tiny crosses. She laid his ledger beside the drawing and ran her finger down the columns. The outer leaves matched the highest tides, every one. The diamonds in the middle matched the neaps. Someone, long before the chapel fell, had built a calendar of water into stone and glass, then left the centre unfinished, a small flower folded in on itself.

She drew the last petal on the Thursday. Outside, the boat came in early, its lantern swinging. Edith blotted the sheet, rolled it under her arm and walked down to the slip. When the masons asked to see the missing piece, she told them the centre would show itself at the next spring tide, and that nobody was to touch it until then.