Black and white pen drawing of a yin yang symbol with a sun in the light half and a crescent moon and stars in the dark half, held up in a sketchbook.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Yin yang with sun and starry moon design

Fine line · Black and grey · Flash

A hand holds an open spiral sketchbook showing a black and white drawing of a yin yang circle. The light half contains a black sun with spiky outlined rays, while the dark half is filled with small white dots for stars and has a white circle that works as a moon. The linework is clean and fine, with the stars created through dotwork and solid black areas giving strong contrast.

Fine line Dotwork Yin yang Sun Moon Star Sketch

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Tobias Quill had painted three signs for the Drowned Bell in a month, and Mrs Anwen Fairleigh had sent back every one. "The sun is too loud," she said, tapping the board with a bitten nail. "And the moon looks like a hole somebody punched in the wood." She wanted a circle split down its middle, one half for the sun and one for the moon, sharing the line without quarrelling.

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He worked on it through a wet March in the back room, the kettle going cold beside him. He drew the sun first, a black disc with rays that curled like candle smoke, and gave each ray an outline so fine he had to hold his breath. For the dark half he took his finest nib and stippled stars across the black until it looked like a night sky someone had flicked ink at. The moon he left as a plain white disc near the bottom, small as a coin.

On the last evening Anwen came in, looked for a long time, and said nothing. Then she asked why the moon sat in the dark and not the light. He told her a moon only shows where it is night. She laughed, a short sound, and said her husband had been the same, always wanting the bright side for himself. She paid him in coppers and a heel of bread.

That night he hung the board from the inn's iron bracket, and the wind caught it and turned it slowly on its chain. The sun swung round into the dark and the moon came up into the light, and for a moment each sat in the other's half, as if they had only been waiting for a push.