Black and grey fine line compass rose tattoo with N and S letters, an arrow and a feather running down the inner wrist and forearm.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Compass rose and feather on a wrist

Fine line · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

A compass rose with an ornate, dotted centre sits on the inner wrist, with a long arrow running up to the N and down to the S, ending in a feathered tail. The linework is fine and precise, with stippled dots filling the rings of the compass. The photograph is black and white against a dark, textured bedsheet, and the tattoo fills the centre of the frame.

Fine line Dotwork Forearm Compass Compass rose Arrow Feather North South Letter

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

Sit down, sit down, and mind the pram, it's got a wheel that sings. Right, you want the one about Ada Moss and the map that wouldn't lie. Forty-one floors of Hollin House and not one of them knew which way was north, because the lifts only went up and down and every window faced the same grey car park. So Ada went looking.

Keep reading

She had a brass compass that had been her dad's, the one he carried on the trawlers out of Grimsby before his chest gave out. The needle had stuck years back, so she kept it in her coat pocket and trusted it the way you trust a dog that's never bitten you. Every morning she stood at the top of the stairwell, turned slowly until the sun came through the broken pane and lit the arrow on the wall, and then she followed that arrow down, counting steps and humming the hymn her dad used to sing badly.

On the ninth landing, south of the bins, she found a grey pigeon feather tied to the railing with red wool, and a scrap of paper pinned under it. It said, in careful capitals, COME BACK THE WAY YOU CAME. She laughed out loud, the way you do when a stranger knows more about you than you'd like. Then she looked at her compass and saw the needle had finally come loose and was swinging, slow and sure, back up the stairs.

She climbed all forty-one floors that afternoon, feather in her fist. Her own front door was open, the kettle already on, and her mum was standing in the hall with her arms folded, saying where on earth have you been. Ada held up the feather and said, the map brought me home. And that, my lovelies, is why I never trust a lift.