Black ink flash design of a smiling sun with a face and a crescent moon decorated with mandala patterns, with dangling ornaments below, in fine line and dotwork style.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Sun and crescent moon with mandala detail

Fine line · Black and grey · Flash

A black ink drawing of a sun with a stylised face at the centre, surrounded by wavy and pointed rays. A large crescent moon with a second face curves around the right side, and both are filled with intricate mandala-like patterns. Ornamental drops hang from the lower edge of the crescent against a plain white background.

Fine line Dotwork Sun Moon Crescent Celestial Mandala Face Ornament Ray

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

Dad painted the cabin roof of the Marigold the summer the lock at Culham stayed shut for three weeks, and he never once let anyone watch him at it. He worked from the towpath at first light with a tin of black gloss and a fine brush he kept in an old cigar tube, dotting the same tiny circles over and over until the rain came and he swore at the sky.

Keep reading

The sun went on the front of the roof, a face in the middle with heavy lids and a mouth that looked like it was about to say something sensible. The moon curved round the back, bigger than seemed right, and he gave it a face too, turned away so you only saw its profile and one eye half shut. Hanging from its lower edge he put a row of little diamonds strung on thread, and when I asked what they were for he said they were for catching whatever fell out of the sky at night.

Mum said he had the faces the wrong way round. The sun should be the one hiding, she said, given how often it slid behind the poplars. He laughed and said the moon had the better job, being only ever half of itself and still managing to pull the whole river about.

The evening he finished, he climbed the ladder to check the paint was dry and didn't come down until the lock keeper's lamp was lit. I found him sitting on the roof with his palm flat on the moon's cheek, the drops swinging above the water. "It's dry," he said. "Come and feel." I did. The black was cool as slate, and when I looked back at the sun, its rays had already begun to stretch across the towpath, reaching for the poplars as though they meant to take them down.