Black and grey dotwork tattoo of seven moon phases in a row across the chest and under the bust, with a full moon at the centre.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Moon phases across the chest in black and grey

Dotwork · Chest · Black and grey · Photo

The tattoo shows seven moon phases in a horizontal row, with a full moon at the centre and crescents tapering outwards on each side. The moons are filled with stippled dot shading that gives a textured, cratered look, while the crescent edges are solid black. The pale skin and plain background keep the focus on the tattoo, which sits across the chest above a dark patterned skirt.

Dotwork Chest Moon Moon phase Full moon Crescent Celestial

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

You learn the moon the way the old men at Newlyn taught it, through the tide and the catch. Your father kept a tally on the inside of the wheelhouse door, seven pencil circles in a row, and each night he shaded one in with the side of his thumb. The thin crescents were the neaps, when the nets came up empty and the gulls sat fat on the slipway. The round one at the centre was spring, when the water drew back so far you could walk out to the Mousehole rocks in your boots.

Keep reading

The night the Morwenna Rose went out short-handed, the full moon hung over the harbour wall pocked like a ship's biscuit. You held the lamp over the rail and watched the swell light up in patches. Your father used to say the dimples were where old storms had struck it. Tom Pascoe, who had never been further than Penzance, swore they were pinholes where the stars had been fixed to the sky. You didn't argue. You were too busy hauling, the wet mesh biting your palms, the silver pouring over the gunwale faster than you could count.

Four nights later the tally wanted its last circle filled, and the crescent on the far left had worn down to a paring. You sat in the wheelhouse with the pencil in your fist. The boat rode low with fish and the radio muttered about a gale off the Lizard. Nobody had told you what to do with the empty one at the end, the one you had drawn for him the morning after the funeral and never touched.

You shaded it in anyway, slow and careful, dot by dot, the way he taught you to stipple rust off a hull. When you looked up, the moon had slipped behind cloud and the whole harbour had gone dark except the lamp swinging on the mast. Then the tide turned, and you turned the wheel with it.