Traditional style tattoo of two colourful mandala flowers with dark green serrated leaves on a calf.

Traditional mandala flowers on a calf

Traditional · Calf · Colour · Photo

Two mandala-style flowers in red, yellow, blue and teal sit on the calf, surrounded by dark green serrated leaves. Bold black outlines define the petals and leaves, with solid fills and soft gradient shading within the petals. The upper flower runs off the right edge of the frame, while the lower flower sits towards the centre against a pale textured background.

Traditional Botanical Calf Flower Mandala Leaves Petal

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The rain had found its way into Harbour View again by the time Mrs Pardoe came across the tin under the stairs. Its lid was rusted shut and its label was in her husband's square capitals: TEAL, NO. 4. She prised it open with a bread knife, and the smell of linseed rose up at her like something from a chapel.

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Tomasz, who had the front room over the pier-side window and paid his rent in coins he counted twice, stood in the hall with his hands in his pockets and asked whether she wanted the railings doing. She said they were grey as a dead herring, and that she wanted flowers, the round, stiff-petalled sort Frank used to draw on the backs of receipts while the kettle boiled. Tomasz borrowed a saucer and a pair of compasses from the kitchen drawer and got to work.

For a week the front steps smelt of turpentine. Guests complained about the ladder, then stopped complaining and started bringing out cups of tea. The first flower came up red and gold, the petals bordered in black like the lead came in a church window, and the second came up blue with a teal eye at its heart. Mrs Pardoe held the brush for the leaves while Tomasz laughed at her grip, and she told him Frank had held it the same way, tight as a fist.

On the last evening the light came off the sea and turned the wet paint to glass. Tomasz offered to sign the work in the corner. Mrs Pardoe shook her head, took the brush from him, and set a single black dot in the centre of the lowest petal, the way Frank always had, so that anyone passing would know someone had made the flowers by hand and meant them to last.