Black dotwork drawing of a moth with a crescent moon above it, set within dashed geometric construction lines, shown as a tattoo design on white paper.

Dotwork moth with crescent moon and geometric lines

Dotwork · Black and grey · Flash

A detailed moth with spread wings sits at the centre of the drawing, its wings patterned with rows of dots and small eye-like motifs. A small crescent moon sits above the moth, and fine dashed construction lines form overlapping circles, diamonds and a vertical axis around it. The drawing is done in black ink on a plain white background, with shading built entirely from stippled dots.

Dotwork Geometric Moth Crescent moon Geometric line Dashed line Diamond Eye Wing

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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

The chain was forty-two links, and Mr Ashby swore it was forty-one, so I walked the orchard again after supper with a lantern and a bag of nails. By the time the last damson had its peg, the sky over the back wall had gone the colour of weak tea, and the first moon was a thin paring above the plum rows.

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I chalked my lines from peg to peg, dashes only, because a solid line in an orchard tells the trees where they must stop growing. Circles came next, struck from the centre stake with a length of twine, then diamonds where the circles met. Each time I lifted the lantern, moths rose out of the long grass to see what the light was for. Late August brings them in their hundreds, soft-bodied things with wings like dusty lace.

One of them, a death's-head with eyes on its wings like old peacock feathers, landed on the vertical axis I had drawn down the middle of the field. It settled right on the chalk where the thread ran through the stake and would not be shifted. I did not have the heart to brush it off, so I measured around it, and its wings made a little roof over the mark.

Mr Ashby came out at dawn with his coffee and his opinion. "Forty-one," he said. I showed him the moth still sitting there, folded tight, and the crescent I had pencilled above it to mark north. He looked at the lines for a long time. "Well, the moth agrees with you," he said, and went back indoors, and I left the chalk exactly where it was.