Realistic grey full moon tattoo with craters and soft shading on the forearm, photographed against a blurred green background.

Realistic full moon on a forearm

Realism · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

A full moon is tattooed on the forearm, shown as a round disc with grey and pale blue-grey tones. Dark patches for the maria and lighter highlights create shading that gives the moon a three-dimensional, photographic look. The tattoo sits centrally on smooth, pale skin, with a dark sleeve on the right and a soft-focus green background.

Realism Forearm Moon Full moon Crater

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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 map was wrong about the Sea of Tranquillity, Marguerite wrote, and she had spent three winters proving it. Dear Hal, the dark patches you call seas are not seas at all but old lava that cooled in plains so flat a man could roll a cart across them for a week. I have drawn them as I see them, through the brass telescope your father left me, in grey wash and a little pale blue where the light slides off the rim. Do not show the Royal Society yet.

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The craters I could not render by eye. I borrowed a stippling pen from the engraver on Cheapside and sat with the lamp turned low, dotting each ring of rock until my wrist ached and the moon in the lens began to look like a bruise that had healed badly. Mr Ferrers came round on Tuesday to ask whether I had gone mad. I told him the moon was a patient thing and I was only taking its history.

The last thing I drew was the highlight, the bright band along the upper edge where the sun has not quite given up. I left the paper bare there, so that the moon would seem to be lit from inside. Then I sealed the drawing in an envelope, addressed it to your ship at Valparaíso, and walked to the post with the dog barking at my heels. If it reaches you before the rains, look at it on a clear night and tell me whether it is the same moon you have been looking at. I have a feeling it is, and that we are only seeing it from different shores.

Yours in ink and impatience, M.