Two black ink mandala tattoos in a side by side photo: a sun with chain drapes on the chest, and a crescent moon with chain drapes on the upper back.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Sun and crescent moon mandala tattoos

Blackwork · Chest · Black and grey · Photo

The left image shows a sun-like mandala with a radiating star outline and chain drapes ending in small diamond shapes, placed on the centre of the chest. The right image shows a crescent moon filled with dotted and lined mandala patterns, with a smaller flower motif and chain drapes, placed on the upper back near the neck. Both designs use fine black linework and dotted shading on pale skin, with no colour and a plain, evenly lit background.

Blackwork Dotwork Chest Back Sun Moon Mandala Star Crescent Chain Diamond Flower

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

On the slow run from Cadiz to the Canaries, the brig Patience carried a carpenter called Aldo Pim, who could not sleep when the sky was clear. He swore the sun and the moon were hung from the masthead on fine chains, and that every night the sea let out a little more of each. If a link ever parted, one of them would drop in the water and not come up again.

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The fog came on the ninth night and the moon went out like a snuffed wick. The crew lit every lantern they had and still could not find the bow. Aldo sat on the hatch with a pot of lamp black and a brush from the cook's kit, and drew a sun with a ring of rays on a square of spare canvas, then a crescent beside it, hung with chain drapes that ended in small diamonds, one for each man aboard.

Ruben, the cabin boy, who had been sick over the rail since Madeira, held the canvas up to the lantern and counted the diamonds out loud. Aldo told him the sea only listens to a count it can finish. Ruben counted to the seventh bell, and when he reached the last diamond the fog thinned like wool pulled apart, and the moon rose low in the east with its beads of light strung along its edge.

They reached the islands with the canvas gone soft from handling. Aldo nailed it above his bench in the hold, and after that the sailors who came down to mend a plank would look up, count the diamonds twice, and go back to their watch easier than before.