Black fine line compass rose tattoo on the inner forearm, with arrows and the letters N, E, S and W.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Compass rose on a forearm

Fine line · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

A black compass rose with four arrowed points labelled N, E, S and W, crossing at a small open circle at the centre. The linework is thin and even, and the ink is solid black with no shading. The tattoo sits on pale skin against a dark, out-of-focus background, and the design fills most of the frame.

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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

Sit yourself down by the water butt, because this is a story about fog, a hen house, and a boy who would not stop walking in circles, and you will want your hands warm for it.

Keep reading

Old Ada kept a kitchen garden behind the chapel wall, and her late husband had laid it out by a compass he painted on a plank of elm, with N pointing up at the gutter and S down by the rhubarb. One October the fog came up off the river so thick you could not see your boots. Her grandson Joseph, nine years old and sure of himself, went out to shut the hens in and did not come back.

She did not shout. She stood at the back door and called in the voice she used for pricking out seedlings. "The sun's gone, love, but the wall hasn't. Find the beans. Put your back to them and that's south, so the gate is ahead and a little to your right, which is east. Mind the cold frame." She called each point as he walked it, north, east, south, west, the way you would count stitches, until his small wet shape came out of the grey and walked into her apron.

Later, with the kettle on, he asked her where the middle of the board was, the place the arrows all crossed. She showed him the little ring at the centre, the nail hole where her husband had pinned the whole thing to the shed. "That's the one spot that never moves," she said. "You only find it by going all the way round.

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