Black and grey dotwork tattoo of a staring owl in front of a full moon, framed by fine geometric circles and lines, on a forearm.

Owl and moon on a forearm with geometric lines

Dotwork · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

A large owl with wide eyes and feathered wings sits centrally, with a detailed full moon placed over its chest and a geometric, dotted ornament below. Fine circles and straight construction lines extend above and around the figures, forming a symmetrical frame. The work uses stippled dotwork for shading and texture in black and grey ink, with no colour.

Dotwork Geometric Fine line Forearm Owl Moon Circle Geometric line Dotwork Feather Ornament

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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

Sit yourself down, the kettle's only just gone, and I'll tell you about the summer the surveyor came to Harrow Bank with his brass compass and his box of pins. Nobody wanted him there. He measured the field behind the chapel with knotted string and drew fine rings in chalk on the cobbles, one inside another, until the whole square looked like a ripple on a pond. Old Mrs Teague swore the lines were pointing at her front door, and she was not far wrong.

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He took a room above the chemist's and kept his window lit all night. The owls in the lime trees watched him the way the councillors did, from high up and without blinking. The largest of them, a barn owl the children called Alderman, would sit on the ridge of the chapel roof and stare down at his drawings as though he were checking the sums.

On the night of the August fair the moon hung so full over the mill that it lay on the chapel tower like a dinner plate. Edwin Lusk climbed up with his chalk and his compass. Those who saw him from the bridge said the owl came down off the ridge and settled on his shoulder, wings folded, and that the two of them stood there together looking out over the rooftops for a long while. Then the moon went behind a cloud and they were gone.

In the morning the town found the cobbles inside the innermost ring dusted with small white dots, hundreds of them, laid out in a pattern nobody could copy. Lusk's compass sat on the tower step with its needle pointing straight at the empty sky. Count the dots if you like, love. Plenty have tried, and every one of them ends up back at the beginning.