White ink mandala, lotus and dotted chain tattoo running from the forearm across the back of the hand.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

White ink mandala and lotus hand chain

Botanical · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

A close photograph of a white ink tattoo on the forearm and back of the hand, showing a large mandala above a lotus flower, a smaller lotus on the wrist and a dotted chain linking to a lotus on the hand. The fine white linework and dotting sit on lightly tanned skin against a pale top and dark fabric, with a blue inset showing a sheet of similar white designs. The composition is angled from the elbow down, so the design reads as a continuous piece across the arm and hand.

Botanical Fine line Forearm Hand Mandala Lotus Dotted chain Flower Flash sheet

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

Dear Marjorie, the lace came back from Mrs Pennock's with the pattern all wrong again, so I spent the evening unpicking rosettes by the lamp while the wireless played dance music from Leeds. You'd laugh at me. The old woman wants flowers stitched in a chain from the cuff of a glove to the knuckle, each bloom a little smaller than the last, joined by beads she insists are pearl but which I know are glass from the market stall on Fenner Street.

Keep reading

I sketched it three times before she was satisfied. The biggest bloom sits at the wrist like a sun seen through frost, all those curling petals and tiny rings of dots, and the smallest rests at the base of the thumb like something dropped from a bracelet. Between them the beads run in a line, one, two, one, as if counting. She kept touching the drawing with one finger and saying the thing was meant to be worn by someone who had nothing to hide, which I did not understand until she told me her daughter had gone to Canada and would not write.

We finished at dusk. I pinned the last rosette in place and she held her hand up to the window, turning it so the pale thread caught the light. It looked less like lace then and more like frost on a hedge, or a path that had been traced over in chalk. She paid me in shillings and a jar of quince jelly. I'm sending you a scrap of the leftover thread, so you'll know what I mean when I say I hope someone is still counting the beads.