Black and grey realism style tattoo of an antique world map with a compass rose, tree and horse on a person's back.

Antique world map across a back

Realism · Back · Black and grey · Photo

A large black and grey tattoo covers most of a person's back, showing an old-style map on a globe-like form with coastlines, meridian lines and handwritten script. A compass rose sits near the lower centre, with a tree and a galloping horse and rider below it. The shading is soft and detailed, with dense stippled areas on the landmass and fine linework on the grid and lettering.

Realism Back Map Globe Compass rose Tree Horse Script

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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

Dad, the lift is out again, so I climbed the nineteen flights with the atlas under my arm and I'm writing this on the windowsill, where the light comes in low and gold at six and sits on the glass like a pan of oil. You'd laugh at me. I've started drawing the estate.

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I'm working on the back of the old Ordnance sheets you left in the drawer, turning them over so the grid lines run the wrong way. The car park is a sea, with the lamp posts for soundings. The bins behind block C are a range of unsurveyed hills, shaded in dots because nobody has ever been brave enough to walk up them. The sycamore by the laundrette is the Tree, the one the old mapmakers put at the edge of the known world, and I've lettered its name in your joined-up hand because mine looks like a spider fell in the ink. The compass rose sits low in the middle, where the bins smell worst and the wind always turns.

Mr Adeyemi's grandson goes past on his bike every evening at half seven, standing on the pedals like a rider in a hurry, so I've put him in the bottom corner where the old maps kept their monsters, with a note underneath saying here be boys who will not wait for the lift. Mum says I'm wasting good paper. The council man came on Tuesday with a clipboard to ask why the bins were in the wrong place on the plan, and I showed him the coastline. He said it looked like a picture of the whole world. I said it was the only one I had that showed where we actually are.

I've left the ink wet on the last corner so it can dry overnight. When the lift is working again I'll post the sheet to you at the address on the card, and you can tell me where I've gone wrong. Put the kettle on when it arrives. Love, Jen.