Black and grey realism tattoo on the upper arm and shoulder showing a woman with wind-blown hair seen from behind, facing a moonlit sea beneath a full moon and clouds.

Moonlit shoreline scene on upper arm

Realism · Upper arm · Black and grey · Photo

A woman with long, wind-blown hair is shown from behind, seated or standing at the edge of a shoreline beneath a large full moon and a cloudy sky. A treeline runs along the horizon, a dark tree leans from a cliff edge on the right, and a bird perches on the cliff top. The shading is soft and detailed in black and grey, with the scene wrapping across the upper arm and onto the shoulder.

Realism Upper arm Shoulder Moon Cloud Woman Sea Tree Bird Hair

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

Don't look at the water yet, Tomas. Wait till I've got you to the bit about the moon, because you'll want to be facing the right way for it. Turn your chair round. There. Now the fleet's out past the Skerry, eleven boats riding low, and Ada Penrose is standing on the shingle with her shawl flapping like a torn sail, because the wind got up at dusk and nobody thought to tell her husband's boat that the sky had changed its mind.

Keep reading

The moon came up full and hard over the headland that night, so bright you could count the knots in a net laid out on the slip. Along the top of the bank the pines leaned into the wind, and out on the end of Gallow Point an old crooked hawthorn hung its arms over nothing. There was a crow on the rock beneath it, black as a stove lid, and it did not move once while Ada stood there. Folk said that crow had sat on that rock since before the lifeboat, watching for boats that were late.

She walked the tide line to the rocks, skirts soaked to the knee, calling her husband's name into a wind that carried it off over the sea. Somewhere past midnight the crow lifted from its ledge and flew down ahead of her, wheeling once above the surf before settling on a boulder at the water's edge. The moment she reached it, a lantern swung round the Skerry and the eleventh boat came nosing in, and her husband stepped onto the shingle with a sack of salt and a story he would never tell straight.

That was the year the crow stopped flying back up to the cliff. It kept to the boulder by the water, and when your grandfather was an old man he swore it still turned its head to watch the fleet come home, the way it had for Ada. Now sit back. The kettle's on.