Two matching black and grey tattoos on the calves, each with a moth above a geometric crystal shape inside dotted diamond outlines, in a dotwork and geometric style.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Matching moth and geometric calf tattoos

Dotwork · Calf · Black and grey · Photo

Two legs are shown side by side, each with a black and grey tattoo. Each design has a moth or beetle-like insect at the top, set above a faceted geometric crystal and within fine dotted diamond and circle outlines. The moth and insect are shaded with solid black and grey tones, while the geometric shapes and outlines are built from stippled dots and thin lines on a soft, pale background.

Dotwork Geometric Calf Moth Beetle Insect Geometric shape Crystal Diamond Circle Dotted line Matching tattoo Leg

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 last northbound had gone through Carrick Junction at twenty past eleven, and Dilys Harrow was still waiting on the platform bench for the replacement bus that never came. Under the sodium lamp, moths threw themselves at the glass in a grey drift. She had counted nine kinds from the ticket hall window, the way her father had taught her, pencilling the tallies in the margin of the timetable.

Keep reading

A man in a damp anorak came up the stairs carrying a cardboard box marked LOST PROPERTY in someone else's capitals. Inside were a diagram book, a pocket protractor and a beetle pinned under cellophane, its wings folded like an old letter. "Found it on the seat of the 9.14," he said. "Thought it might be yours." It was not hers. Dilys turned the box over and saw a sketch on the inside flap: a moth hanging above a faceted crystal, a diamond drawn in dots around them, everything faint as breath on glass.

She knew that drawing. Her grandmother had kept one like it in a tin of shirt buttons, a page of stippled diamonds copied from a geometry book and never finished. Dilys pinned the flap to the corkboard beside the fire notices and went to rouse the bus driver, who was asleep in his cab with the engine running.

When she came back the platform was empty except for the moths. She lifted the beetle from its cellophane, set it on the windowsill where the lamplight could reach it, and watched the bus lights swing in off the moor. Somewhere down the line a train was coming, slow and unseen, and she found she was counting the dots on the flap one by one until the headlamps covered the page.