Small black fine line tattoo of a row of moon phases across the inner forearm, with a book and a dark sleeve beside it.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Moon phases on a forearm

Fine line · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

A row of small black moon phases, from crescents to near-full circles, runs across the inner forearm. The lines are simple solid shapes with clean edges and no shading, set against pale skin. The arm rests in the frame with a book on the left and a dark sleeve on the right, under warm indoor light.

Fine line Forearm Moon phase Moon Crescent moon Full 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 oven was already roaring when I came in, and Dennis had chalked a row of small circles on the back door, the way he did every month, one for each night the moon had left. 'Waxing and waning,' he said, not looking up from the tray of batch dough. 'Waxing's for people who want something. Waning's for bakers.'

Keep reading

For the first week I thought he was being odd. Each morning at half four he drew one more shape beside the others, a crescent getting thinner, and each morning I looked past the loading bay at the sky over the car park, wondering why he cared. The moon above the bins was always a little less than the day before. Flour dust hung in the lamplight and the radio talked about fog on the A-roads.

On the last morning of the cycle, the chalk ran out before the moon did. Dennis stood at the door with the stub between his fingers and told me the story his own mother had told him, about a baker who kept the moon in a tin box so the bread would rise on time, and how she had opened it one dawn and the whole sky went dark. I laughed. He didn't.

I drew the last sliver myself, a thin curve no thicker than a fingernail. When I stepped out, the moon hung low and nearly gone above the car park, and the first loaves were coming out behind me, steaming into the cold. I left the chalk where it was.