Black and grey tattoo of a compass rose over a globe with an arrow above and three feathers below, on the upper arm.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Compass and arrow on an upper arm

Upper arm · Black and grey · Photo

The tattoo shows a compass rose set inside a circle with a globe-style map in the centre, topped by an arrow and with three feathers hanging beneath. The linework is dark and crisp, with soft grey shading on the globe and feathers. The design is shown in black and grey against a bare upper arm, with a white sleeve and a blue garment at the edge of the frame.

Upper arm Compass Globe Arrow Feather Map

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

The Pier Pavilion smelt of wet wool and Brylcreem, and Eddie Marsh had been standing by the bandstand for an hour with a rolled chart under his arm, which meant he was going to leave. I knew it the way you know weather. He had drawn every coast between Hull and Harwich in pencil, inked over the lines, then rubbed them soft with his thumb until the harbours looked like fingerprints.

Keep reading

When the band slid into 'Moonlight Serenade' he crossed the floor and put the chart in my hands instead of asking me to dance. In the middle was a globe he had drawn in careful circles of sea and land, and over it a compass rose with its needles pointing at nothing I recognised. Three feathers hung from the base, pencilled so fine I had to tilt the paper to the light. 'Gull's,' he said. 'Off the groyne, Tuesday. I wanted you to have something that doesn't fly off the way I do.'

I asked him where north was on a thing like that. He tapped the arrow at the top, its point driving up through the rim as if it had been shot from somewhere below the dance floor. 'Wherever you're standing,' he said. It sounded clever in the Pavilion and like a shrug on the pier the next morning.

The band finished. I folded the chart along its creases and kept it in my handbag, and on the ferry to Felixstowe I unfolded it again. There was a small ink spot where he had lifted his pen, right over the Atlantic. I understood then that it was a fix, not a map, a place he meant to come back to. He never did. I still take it out when the band plays something slow, and I can still find north on it.