Black linework stencil of a symmetrical mandala design with lotus-like petals, scrolls and circles on translucent paper, shown for a tattoo placement.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Symmetrical mandala stencil with lotus petals

Black and grey · Flash

A symmetrical mandala-style design drawn in fine black outline on translucent paper. It centres on a lotus-like form of pointed petals, with scrolls, small circles and scalloped sections fanning out to either side and tapering to a point at the bottom. The image is a plain line drawing with no shading or colour, and the design fills most of the frame against a pale background.

Mandala Lotus Scrollwork Ornament Petal Circle

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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

The tracing paper is already stiff with salt when Mr Pellow hands it to you, and he does not ask you to be careful with it, only exact. You lay it over the drum of the lens, where the brass bracket has cracked along one scroll, and trace the petals one by one with the nib pen he keeps for the logbook. The ink smears if your hand sweats. He has told you this three times since breakfast.

Keep reading

By dusk the fog has come in off the Atlantic and the rock is a grey hush. The lamp must be lit at six. Pellow climbs the iron stair slower than he used to, one hand on the rail, and you follow with the spirit lamp and the matches. Up in the lantern room the lens stands like a lotus of glass, its prisms stacked in rings, and when the wick takes and the clockwork turns, the light folds out through the petals and fans across the water in pale scallops, small circles of it chasing each other over the swell.

The bracket gives way at half past nine. You hear it before you see it, a tick like a knuckle, and the top ring slips a finger's width. Pellow is already on the stair with the drawing in his coat pocket. He unfolds it under the lantern, the black lines gone translucent with damp, and says the petals are right and the scrolls are right, only the scroll on the left of the lowest point is one turn out. You fix it by hand, kneeling on cold iron, matching each curl of the stencil to the brass while the fog presses against the glass.

At midnight the beam is steady. Out on the water a trawler turns for home, steering by a fan of light that sweeps and returns like a flower opening. In the morning the drawing is still pinned beside the logbook, its ink beaded with damp, and the lamp is cold because the sun has come up. Pellow taps it once with a finger, as if counting petals, and goes down to put the kettle on.