Two black and grey dotwork tattoos on upper backs: a whale tail fluke within a circle on the left, and a crescent moon with a face on the right.

Whale tail and crescent moon on upper backs

Fine line · Back · Black and grey · Photo

This diptych shows two photographs of black and grey tattoos on a person's upper back. The left tattoo is a whale tail fluke in fine outline with dotted guide lines and stippled shading inside a circle. The right tattoo is a crescent moon with a stylised face, dotted accents, geometric ornaments and hanging diamond drops.

Fine line Dotwork Geometric Back Circle Crescent moon Diamond Dot Dotted line

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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 sea has been flat since Tuesday, which my father would have called a lie told by the barometer. I have the chart pinned under the lamp and the dividers in my fist, pricking the course out in small dots the way he taught me, one every half hour, so the line never looks more certain than it is.

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The moon is a sliver tonight, low over the Hebrides side, and the sky hasn't decided whether to be black or grey. Ruth came up at two with cocoa she didn't need to make and asked whether we were past the shoal. I told her we were past where the chart says the shoal is, which is not the same thing, and she laughed the way people do when they are too tired to argue.

The whale came up off the starboard bow at a quarter past three, a fluke the size of a kitchen table lifting out of the water, then gone so quickly I wrote it down as a trick of the glass. Then it came again, closer, and the dots I had laid down for our course seemed to lean towards it as if they wanted to follow. I do not believe in omens. I believe in dead reckoning and in tide tables printed by careful men.

Still, I have drawn a small circle where it went under, and a crescent beside it with a face in the curve, and I am leaving the lamp on. At first light we will see whether the coast is where the numbers say it is.