Black ink drawing of a compass rose set within a mandala, with dotwork shading on the petals, shown as a tattoo design on cream paper.

Compass rose mandala design

Dotwork · Black and grey · Flash

A symmetrical compass rose with an eight-point star at its centre, surrounded by layered petal shapes, circular bands and small diamond motifs. Fine linework outlines the forms, and stippled dotwork shading creates texture and depth along the petals and star points. The design is drawn in black ink on a plain cream background and is centred with dots marking the eight compass points.

Dotwork Geometric Compass Compass rose Mandala Star Petal Dot Circle Diamond

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Snow had been falling since noon, and by four the lane behind the top field had gone the same grey as the sky. Maeve's father had drawn a compass rose on the back of a feed invoice years ago, eight points pressed hard into the paper with a biro, and tacked it above the dairy door. She knew the sheet by heart. North was the long spike pointing at the gate, and the wind had swung round east and would not settle.

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She stood at the yard gate with the lantern in one hand and the collie pressed against her shins. Every fence post along the boundary had a tin disc nailed to it, stamped with a letter, and the letters ran round in the order of the star. Her father had done that the winter the Hollis boy walked into the dyke and was not found until March. Bramble's ears went flat. Maeve set off along the wire with her left glove trailing it, the way she had been taught, counting posts under her breath.

The wire bent at the ash tree, and that was where the plan went wrong. The barn light should have been her bright point, but the snow had swallowed it. Instead there was a faint orange smear through the flakes, the stove in the lambing shed, which Gran always banked before dusk. She went towards it, slower than she wanted to, and the dog pulled left, then right, then stopped dead and barked once at the ground.

Under the drift was the cattle grid, exactly where the middle of the star should be. Maeve knelt, brushed the snow off with her glove, and laughed out loud at herself. Four hundred yards, one shed, a dog that knew better than she did, and a pencilled sheet of paper over the dairy door had brought her home. She banged the lantern handle against the shed door, and someone inside said her name as if it were the first word of the morning.