Black and grey engraving-style tattoo on a forearm showing a crescent moon with a smiling face, clouds, stars and a small figure on a hillside.

Crescent moon and clouds on a forearm

Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

The tattoo shows a crescent moon with a human face in profile, surrounded by stylised clouds and four-point stars inside a circular frame. Below, a small standing figure sits on a hill or horizon, with radiating lines fanning out from it. The work is rendered in black and grey with fine hatching and stippled shading that gives an etched, vintage engraving look.

Forearm Moon Crescent moon Face Cloud Star Figure Horizon Hill

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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 Tom, The moon's been doing that face again since Tuesday, the one Dad used to say looked like a bishop who'd been told a secret. I'm up on the fourteenth floor of Harlow Court with the window cracked for the smell of the chip shop, and I can see the whole estate laid out under it like a tin tray. Mrs Okafor on eleven has put her Christmas lights up already, and the lift is still broken, so I've been taking the stairs with the shopping and counting them in threes to keep the dark out of my legs.

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I went down to the car park last night to fetch the dog's lead from the boot and stood there a while looking up. Those little four-pointed stars the old engravers used to put in the corners of almanacs were out in a row over the garages, and the clouds were lit from underneath like wool held up to a bulb. Nobody else was about. I thought of you, out on that deck somewhere past Gibraltar, and I thought, well, he's probably looking at the same thing with worse coffee.

Here's the bit I'm meaning to tell you. There's a figure in the picture I always forget about, small and dark on the horizon, with the light fanning out behind it like someone's opened a door at the bottom of the world. Last night I realised it isn't walking away. It's just standing there, waiting to see which way the light goes. I'd like to think that's you, or me, or whoever's on the next shift. Write when you can. Kiss Dad's grave for me, and tell the moon it looks better in ink than it ever did in the sky. Love, Nell