Black ink flash drawing of three mandala-style flowers with leaves and loose petals on white paper, suited to a tattoo design.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Three mandala flowers flash sheet

Botanical · Black and grey · Flash

The drawing shows three symmetrical mandala-style flowers with layered petals, centre rings and pointed leaves, arranged across a sheet of white paper with a blue border. Scattered single petals and leaves fill the spaces between the motifs. The linework is uniform black ink, with hatched and striped shading on some leaves and fine concentric detail within the flower centres.

Botanical Geometric Mandala Flower Leaf Petal

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

Hush now, and pass me the wet rag before the lamp cage goes dark. You've all heard about the Kestrel Drift, but you've never heard how the third bay got its flowers, so sit down and listen. It began with Oda Benmoussa and the last clean sheet of paper aboard, the one she kept folded in her boot for seven years because the printers had gone dead and nobody could say what a bloom looked like anymore.

Keep reading

She unfolded it one cold cycle, when the scrubbers coughed and the children were crowding the galley for warmth. She drew from the centre outwards, with a black pen that had nearly run out of ink. First a small ring, then a ring of pointed leaves, then another ring, and another, until she had a flower as round and steady as a pressure seal. She drew three of them, one across from the next, and when the sheet felt too empty she let petals drift in the margins, loose and single, the way they fall in a wind you cannot feel.

The children took turns tracing the hatched leaves with their fingers. Each ring was a day, Oda told them, and each stripe on a leaf was a breath of air they had not yet spent. Warden Corran wanted the paper for wick fuel. Oda said he could have it when the Drift had a flower that didn't need it, and he laughed and went back to his gauges.

When the Drift finally made orbit at Tallow Ring, the ship's gardeners pinned that sheet above the first seed trays. They planted by her rings, one flower per tray, and the sweet green came up where the black ink had been. If you walk into the third bay tomorrow, look up at the bulkhead. You'll find three rings painted there, and a scatter of loose petals waiting for someone to finish the job.