Black compass rose tattoo with N, E, S and W points on the inner wrist of a hand held palm-up against a dark background.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Compass rose on inner wrist

Geometric · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

A close photograph of a black compass rose tattoo on the inner wrist, with the fingers of the hand visible at the top of the frame. The design uses solid black points and fine outlines around a central circle, with the cardinal directions marked N, E, S and W. The ink is entirely black and grey, set against pale skin and a dark, plain background.

Geometric Forearm Compass Compass rose North Wrist

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 lamp in the binnacle had been spitting since Tuesday, and by the third night out of Valparaíso the whole watch was muttering that the ship had lost her north. You didn't believe it. A card that swings is only telling you about the iron around it, and iron can be talked round. So you knelt on the wet deck with a shaded torch and a stub of pencil, and you drew the old rose the way your father drew it on the back of every tide table he ever gave you: eight points in black, the long ones sharp as knives, the N standing up like a mast.

Keep reading

Mr Pardoe, the second mate, laughed when he saw you trace it over the chart with the dividers. "Ink won't stop a ship going round in circles," he said. You told him the drawing was for you, not the ship. A man who has lost the north on a dark sea needs something he can hold still in his head. He went below without another word, but at four bells he came up with a tin cup of cocoa and stood at your shoulder while the sky greyed.

The cloud broke near dawn. Through a gap low on the horizon came a single star you knew, and the needle, given time and patience, settled exactly where your pencilled N had said it would. Mr Pardoe checked it twice with the azimuth ring, then looked at your drawing for a long while without speaking.

You still carry that rose in the back of your logbook, worn soft at the corners, because it was the first thing you ever drew that the sea agreed with. Whatever the iron does, the north stays where you put it.