Black dotwork and blackwork tattoo of a tipi with a crescent moon and mountains on a forearm, set against a wooden fence.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Tipi, crescent moon and mountains on a forearm

Dotwork · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

A tipi outline sits on the forearm with a crescent moon to its left. Inside the tipi, dotted stars fill the upper panel and a mountain range with solid black peaks fills the lower sections. The design is entirely in black ink and grey dot shading, centred on the forearm against a plain wooden background.

Dotwork Blackwork Forearm Crescent moon Mountain Star Night sky

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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 nearer, the fire only throws its heat on this side of the log. You want the story of the tent, do you? Then mind your tea, because my mother's mother told it to me with her hands in the dough, and it has never once been told without a spill.

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Out past the last ash trees at the edge of Thornwick there stood a tipi made of nine elk hides, sewn by a widow called Maud Pell who had walked up from the coast with a needle and a debt. She cut the hides by moonlight, which is why the crescent hung on the pole above the smoke flap, and she pricked the night sky into the upper panel one star at a time with a bone awl. Below the stars she worked the mountains in solid black where the hide was thickest, because she said a hill keeps its promises longer than a man does.

When the winter came hard, Maud sold the tent to a cart-driver from over the ridge, who unrolled it on the frozen green to look for moth holes. He found none. He found instead that the stars had gone cold and grey, and when he lifted the flap to climb inside, the whole valley's night came in with him, so that the village lamps went out one by one as if someone had pinched the wicks.

They say he's still in there, sitting by a fire that never burns down, and that if you walk the forest edge on a clear night you can see the smoke hole glowing with its small pale crescent. Maud never came back for it. She kept her debt, paid it in full, and left the moon on the pole for whoever needed a little light to find their way home.