Black and grey blackwork tattoo of a mirrored gothic cathedral with spires and crescent moons across both calves.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Mirrored gothic cathedral on both calves

Blackwork · Calf · Black and grey · Photo

A standing figure shows a symmetrical tattoo of a gothic cathedral on each lower leg, with tall spires, pointed arches and crescent moon motifs. The bold black linework is layered with fine hatching and solid black fills, and the two halves mirror each other across the legs. The image is black and white against a dark patterned background, so the design's graphic structure stands out clearly.

Blackwork Geometric Calf Spire Crescent moon

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 cathedral came to Holloway Common on the back of a flatbed lorry, folded in canvas like a sleeping bat, and it was my job to raise it. Nobody had told the fair that the spires were older than the rides. Mr Vane, who owned the Mirror Show, said the thing had been built by a man who drew churches from memory after a fever, and that the crescents on either side were the only honest bits, because the moon was the one thing the builder had seen clearly.

Keep reading

We pinned the two halves to the tent poles at dusk, one on the left and one on the right, so that a visitor walking between them would see a cathedral and its reflection standing shoulder to shoulder. The arches were cut from black card. Vane painted the hatching by lantern light, a fine grey net over every stone, and at nine o'clock the first customers came in with their collars up against the wind.

A girl called Ada paid her penny and stood between the spires a long time. Then she turned to me, quite calm, and said the left one had a door that the right one did not. I looked. She was right. The right-hand arch had been drawn solid, without the little keyhole that Vane had sketched on the left. We had never noticed, because we had only ever built them to match.

We went into the tent after the last show and held the lantern up to both halves until our shadows fell across the canvas and joined. Then Vane took a pen from his waistcoat and, very carefully, gave the right-hand door its keyhole. Next morning the fair was gone, but the card cathedral was still standing in the empty field, its two spires pointing at the same small moon.