Two matching forearm tattoos in fine line: a crescent moon with a face on one arm and a sun with a face on the other, both with dotted chain drapes.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Matching crescent moon and sun forearm tattoos

Fine line · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

Two forearms sit side by side, each carrying a line drawing of a celestial figure. The left arm shows a crescent moon with a face and curled details, and the right shows a sun with a face, rayed outline and small curls, both hung with dotted chain drapes and small pendant drops. The work is in fine black linework with dotted accents and no shading, set against plain skin and a dark background.

Fine line Dotwork Forearm Moon Sun Face Dotted chain Celestial

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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

Sit down on the cabin step, the pair of you, and mind the coal bucket. Your great-grandad worked this cut before the locks had numbers painted on them, and he swore the sun and the moon were sisters who could never agree on a towpath. The sun wore her rays loose like a fishwife's shawl. The moon kept her face turned low and her chains tidy, loops of dew drawn down from her brow and hung with little drops that chimed whenever a boat slid under her.

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One October the sun grew tired of being looked at by everybody. She sent word down the river by a heron, who was a poor messenger and got the words muddled. The heron told the moon that the sun wanted her chains, and the moon, who had never once been asked for anything, lifted off her finest drape and dropped it into the lock at Hollin Bridge. Next morning the sun came up wearing it round her neck like a collar, and she looked so put out that the keeper's girl laughed and nearly fell in.

The moon went without her chains for a month and grew thin as a paring. The sun, weighed down by a stolen collar, could not shine through it, so the whole valley went grey and the eels stopped biting. Wren, the keeper's girl, who had a tin whistle and no fear of heights, climbed the mast of the nearest barge with the chain between her teeth and hung it back over the water where the moon could see it.

And that's why, when you see the pair of them up there, they're careful with each other's jewellery. Now hush. Pass me the matches, and don't you dare tell your mother I've been up the mast.