Black and grey dotwork tattoo of a crescent moon holding a domed palace and small stars, placed on the upper thigh.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Crescent moon with domed palace on thigh

Dotwork · Thigh · Black and grey · Photo

A crescent moon with cratered texture frames a cluster of domed towers and minarets, with four small four-pointed stars in the surrounding space. The design is built from stippled dots and fine shading, giving the moon and buildings their volume. It is rendered entirely in black and grey ink on the upper thigh, with a patterned sleeve and a hand visible at the edges of the frame.

Dotwork Thigh Moon Crescent moon Star Crater

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

The Hallam Brothers' Travelling Wonder had not raised its tent in Lincolnshire since the year coal went dear, and by October the elephant had been sold to a man in Hull. What remained was a grey pony called Duchess, a clown who mended wheels, and Ada Penrose, who could balance a ladder on her chin and had decided that the moon was the only audience left who had not stopped coming.

Keep reading

Her grandmother had told her that the moon was a crescent because it was a cup held out to be filled, and that on its far side stood a palace of nine domes, where old showmen went when the roads ran out. The palace had a lamp in every window and a gate that opened for anyone carrying something useless and beautiful. Ada had nothing useless left. She sold the ladder to a scrapyard man for four shillings and kept the rungs.

She walked to the top of the stubble field when the moon rose, and she laid the rungs along the dark edge of the crescent until they became a stair. At the top a gatekeeper with a lantern asked what she carried. She showed him her grandmother's ringmaster's hat, a shilling with a hole in it, and a laugh she had not used in a year. He considered the laugh for a long time, then the hat, and stepped aside.

Inside, the domes glowed with the brass light of old tent poles, and a crowd of silver-faced performers sat waiting in rows. Ada took the centre ring, set the hat on her chin, and began. Far below, a farm boy looked up from the stubble, saw a small light climbing the rim of the moon, and ran home to tell his mother the circus was back in town.