Black and grey dotwork drawing of a shaded rose with leaves and paisley mandala ornaments, shown as a tattoo design on paper.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Rose and mandala dotwork design on paper

Dotwork · Black and grey · Flash

A shaded rose in full bloom sits at the centre, flanked by two dark leaves and framed by intricate mandala and paisley ornaments that extend downwards with teardrop dangles. The rose is rendered with fine stippling and soft graduated shading, while the surrounding ornaments are built from dense dots and delicate linework. The design is drawn in black ink on pale paper and is composed as a vertical, symmetrical piece.

Dotwork Botanical Rose Leaves Mandala Paisley Ornament Teardrop

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dear Tom,

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The rain came off the tips at last and the back lane is running like a gutter, so I am writing this at the kitchen table with the lamp turned low to save the oil. Your dinner is in the oven under a plate. Don't let Hughie tell you it's cold.

Mrs Pryce brought round the paper she had from the drapers in Ashby, the one with the rose drawn in the middle and the lace spreading out from it like a doily that has been let off its leash. I have been at it every night since Sunday. You would laugh at me, bent over the table with a nib pen, putting in one dot after another and counting them under my breath so I don't lose my place. Three hundred and twelve on the left petal alone. The rose I have shaded the way Dad taught me to shade a hearth brush, lighter at the lip where the light falls and darker down in the heart. The teardrops hang off the bottom like the water that drips from the cage when the shift comes up. I put them in on purpose. I wanted something of the pit in it that was not coal dust. When the ink was dry I pinned it to the larder door, where you will see it when you come in at six with your face still black, before you have had the chance to wash. Look at it first. Then tell me it isn't the finest thing in Dunmere.

The rose on the sill is in bud for the first time since the roof fell in. I thought it would be dead by now. Dad said nothing grows up through a slag heap, and I have told him he is wrong about that too.

Love, Nell