Three side-by-side views of a large white ink mandala tattoo on a forearm, with the surrounding skin covered in solid black ink.

White ink mandala on a blackened forearm

Blackwork · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

The image shows three close views of the same forearm, each with a circular mandala design rendered in fine white linework. The design has a lotus-like centre, layered petal rings and ornamental scrolls radiating outward. The surrounding skin is blacked out, so the pale lines stand out sharply, and the composition is symmetrical across the three panels.

Blackwork Geometric Forearm Mandala Lotus Ornament Circle Flower Scroll

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

Before the bells of the lower town, Mirela the baker lit the ovens in Coldharbour Lane while the rest of the street still slept. Each morning she scraped the soot from the oven mouth with a wet cloth, and each morning she left a ring of pale ash behind, round as a dinner plate. Her mother had told her a bakery needed a sign that the day had been started properly.

Keep reading

One winter the ash rings began to change. On the cold mornings, when flour dust hung in the air, the pale circles had petals inside them, eight, then twelve, then more, with a centre like a lotus opening. She told nobody. Tobiah Wren, the old baker across the lane, saw the marks on her shutters and said the oven was praying. She said it was only bored.

In February a boy came to the back door asking for bread for his sister, who would not wake. Mirela gave him two loaves and the heel of a third. While he ate, she drew a ring in ash on the flagstones with her finger: eight petals, then the scrolls that curl outward like smoke. The boy traced the lines with his bare foot. When the sun came up, the ring was still there, pale on the black stone, and his sister was sitting in the doorway opposite, asking for the same bread.

Mirela never explained it. Each dawn after that she drew the circle before she lit the first oven, and people began waiting in the lane for the sign, bringing their own loaves to be warmed beside it. The ring faded by noon, but nobody swept it away until it was gone.