Compass rose tattoo on a forearm with black linework, dotted detail and soft red, pink and green washes.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Compass rose on a forearm

Fine line · Forearm · Mixed · Photo

A compass rose sits across the inner forearm, with its outer rings, star points and needle drawn in black linework. Swirling flourishes and stippled dots extend to either side of the central design. Soft red, pink, green and purple washes sit behind the compass, giving a loose, painterly effect against the skin.

Fine line Dotwork Forearm Compass Compass rose Swirl Dot Wash

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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

Mind the third step, it tips you, and never mind what the gulls say about it. You want the compass story, then you'll have it. Ezra Quill came down to Saltcote in the spring of fifty-three with a tin box of brushes and not one chart in it. He said he drew maps for people who had lost their way, which the harbour men took as a joke until he sat himself on the slipway and began.

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He inked the rings and the star points first, black and careful, the way a surveyor draws a boundary. Then he let the colour do as it liked. The pink of the evening went over the breakwater, the green of the marsh bled into the shingle, and a purple cloud from Sallow Point crept in and stayed. Mrs Oddie said it looked like a sunset that had been left out in the rain, and she was not wrong, though she bought a print anyway.

The lifeboat coxswain, Tom Hesketh, asked him to set the needle true to north, since the sea was the only thing in Saltcote that never lied. Ezra told him the needle wobbled on every drawing he'd ever made, because north was a thing people agreed on, not a thing the water knew. Tom grumbled and went out anyway. The fog came in thick that October, and the boat was found by the lamp on the pier, not by any compass at all.

The drawing still hangs in the Anchor, behind the bar, glass cracked across one corner. The needle points at the door. Nobody has ever moved it.