Black and grey circular tattoo of a crescent moon, stars, waves and a whale tail in fine line and dotwork on the upper back near the shoulder.

Moon, waves and whale tail in a circle on a shoulder

Fine line · Shoulder · Black and grey · Photo

A circular tattoo shows a black night sky with white dot stars and a crescent moon, above layered sea waves and a stippled whale tail. The waves are drawn in fine black parallel lines, while the tail and the dark sky are filled with dotwork and solid black ink. The image is a close, straight-on view of the upper back, with the tattoo sitting centrally on the shoulder blade area against plain pale skin.

Fine line Dotwork Shoulder Moon Crescent moon Star Night sky Wave Sea Circle

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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

The frost has got into the top field again, and you walk it before light with the torch clamped in your teeth because your hands are full of the gate chain. The furrows run down to the sea wall in long grey ridges, the same rhythm as the swell you can hear beyond the dunes, and by the time you reach the fence the moon is a thin paring hung low over the marsh.

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Your father used to say the sea was only a field that had got ideas. You never believed him. Last week the tide left a whale on the shingle below the bottom pasture, a grey tail lifted out of the surf like a hand asking for something. The men from the council came with a van and a rope and went away again without it. Nobody could shift it, and nobody wanted to be the one who tried.

Now you stand at the wall and watch the water heave in its black lines under the stars, and you think about how the tail is still there, stippled grey where the salt has worn it, rising each time the sea comes up. You turn the tractor keys over in your pocket. The engine will not start in this cold. You will have to wait for the sun, the same way the whale waits for the tide.

At first light you drive the quad down to the shingle with a flask and a sack of feed for the ewes. The moon is still up over the water, pale as a fingernail. The tail has gone under in the night. Only the ripples remain, running in and out in neat silver rows, as if someone had ploughed the sea and left it ready for seed.