Red and black compass rose tattoo with a dotted outer ring and N, S, E and W markings, on the inner forearm.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Compass rose on a forearm

Dotwork · Forearm · Mixed · Photo

A compass rose sits on the inner forearm, with a red and black eight-pointed star at its centre and a dotted circle surrounding it. Fine lines and small stippled dots add a hand-drawn, vintage feel, with the compass letters placed at the cardinal points. Red and black ink dominate against the skin, and the background shows dark wall and potted green plants.

Dotwork Fine line Forearm Compass Compass rose Star Circle Dot

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 rose was finished the night before the Margaret sailed, and Josiah Penhale was still picking grit of cinnabar from under his nails when Captain Hale came up the stairs. 'The north point,' Hale said, tapping the paper with a thumb that smelt of tar. 'Make it redder. I want the men to find home in the dark.'

Keep reading

Josiah had drawn the dotted ring by hand, a hundred small points he counted under his breath, and flicked ink from a quill across the margins so the paper looked as though it had been out in weather. The letters went at the cardinal points in his neatest copperplate, N, E, S, W, and he left the south a little smudged, because the Margaret was bound for waters nobody had charted.

She did not come back that year, nor the next. In the third spring a boy from the chandlery brought a parcel tied in oilcloth. Inside was the chart, creased into a square, and along its edge someone had written in blunt pencil: the south point lies where you said it would. Hale had marked a bay of black rock where Josiah had drawn only a dot.

Josiah took his knife and scraped a tiny red star into the margin beside the ring, the way his master had taught him to sign a finished plate. Then he folded the chart back into its oilcloth and set it in the window, north facing out, so any ship crossing the harbour could see where home was.