Black and grey botanical and ornamental tattoos on a woman's thighs, with a skull and mandala on the left thigh and leaves on the right, above denim cut-off shorts.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Skull and mandala tattoos on both thighs

Botanical · Thigh · Black and grey · Photo

A close crop of a person's upper legs, wearing denim cut-off shorts and a dark top with hands in the pockets. The left thigh carries a large skull surrounded by a mandala-like ornament, with wavy linework above it, and the right thigh has a mandala motif with leaf forms beneath it. The tattoos are rendered in black and grey with fine outlines and soft shading against warm skin, set against a plain light wall.

Botanical Thigh Skull Mandala Leaves Ornament

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, the fire wants feeding and so do you. You have all heard how the sand painters of the high monastery work, with their tubes of coloured grit and their bent backs, a whole circle of petals and gates made grain by grain over nine days. What you have not heard is what Brother Lobsang did on the tenth morning, when the mandala was finished and the abbot had gone off to his prayers.

Keep reading

He was twelve, and he had made the best circle the valley had ever seen. Its outer ring had leaves like green flames, and at its heart sat a small white skull on black, grinning up at the sun the masters had painted there. The abbot had said nothing about the skull. When the boy came to ask why the whole thing must be swept, the old man only said that the thing you love most is the thing you must let go of before the wind takes it for you.

So they carried the bowl of coloured sand down to the river, and the boy tipped it into the current with his two hands. The water took the gates first, then the petals, and last of all the skull, which turned over twice like a fish and went off down the valley towards the fig trees where the lowland farmers were waiting for rain.

Here is what I was told. The sand reached the fig roots by evening. The leaves that came out of them that spring were striped with blue, the colour of the skull's eyes, and every farmer in three villages swore the harvest had never tasted so sweet.