Black and grey tattoo of a world map, with each continent filled with ornate mandala patterns, across a person's upper back and shoulder blade.

World map tattoo filled with mandala patterns

Back · Black and grey · Photo

The tattoo shows a world map with North and South America, Africa, Europe and Asia, and Australia visible, spread across the upper back and shoulder blade. Each landmass is filled with dense, ornamental patterns of scrolls, petals and mandala-like motifs, separated by bold outlines and fine interior linework. The work is rendered entirely in black and grey tones, with soft shading that gives the patterns depth against the skin.

Back World map Continent Mandala Ornament Globe Map

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 Tomas, I hope the damp has not reached your chest this winter, though I suspect it has, given the state of the north-facing room. The Guild sent back the engraved sheets this morning with a note saying the coastline of Africa looks unfinished and that I am to fill the inland spaces with plain hatching, as the Society prefers. I have not done it. I sat with the plate for three nights instead, and on the third I understood what I had been doing wrong. The empty land frightens them. They want the world to look measured, but nobody has ever measured the inside of a continent, so every line I drew there was a guess dressed up as fact.

Keep reading

So I went back to the rings my mother taught me to draw on the backs of her embroidery cloths, the petals that open from a single point and never quite close. I began in the north, where the ice is, and worked outward, letting each scroll stop only where a river or a border forced it to. By the time I reached the Indian coast the copper was thick with lace and I could barely see the outlines I had traced. Africa took the longest. Its edge held firm while the petals pushed in from the shore, like a tide that refused to go out.

Tell the Guild the map is finished. Tell them the sea is still bare, because I have left it empty on purpose, and the eye goes there to rest. If they want their hatching, they can cut it themselves. I am sending the proof by the Thursday coach, and I have drawn a small compass rose in the corner, though I could not find the point where the petals begin. Keep this letter if you like, and burn it if you must.