Colour traditional-style tattoo of a smiling sun with a crescent moon face and swirling rays on the lower abdomen, over a blue and purple wash.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Sun and crescent moon on the lower abdomen

Traditional · Other · Colour · Photo

A stylised sun with a human face and a crescent moon overlapping its centre sits at the middle of the design, surrounded by long pointed rays and curled swirls. The bold black outlines are filled with orange, yellow and red, with a soft blue and purple wash behind the rays. The tattoo is centred on bare skin, with dark fabric visible along the bottom edge of the frame.

Traditional Other Sun Moon Face Ray Swirl

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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

Snow had sealed the high pass for nine days when Ilse saw the sun come down the track. It was not the sun, her father said, only a traveller who wore one on her face. She stood in the doorway of the inn at Harrow Gap with her hair burning copper and her rays like bent spears, and behind her shoulder a pale moon kept its eyes shut against the glare.

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Anton had one room and a fire that would not see the night out, but the woman only wanted a bowl of broth and a place to sit. She ate with her fingers, laughing, and each time she laughed the snow outside turned blue and then violet, as if the hills were bruised with colour. The moon at her shoulder grew thinner with every laugh, the way a candle does when someone keeps breathing on it.

Ilse brought a wool blanket and laid it over the pale one without thinking. The moon's eyes opened. It was cold, colder than the snow, and it looked at Ilse the way a field looks at rain. The sun turned and saw what had been done, and her grin went quiet. She gathered her rays close and began to hum, low and old, and the moon leaned in and listened.

Morning came up over the ridge ordinary and pale. The sun had gone on down the far side of the pass, and the moon was nowhere in the sky, though Ilse thought she saw it on the windowsill, a thin white crescent of frost no bigger than a fingernail. Anton swept the hearth and said nothing. Ilse kept the blanket, and every night after that she left the shutter open a crack.