Black line compass rose tattoo with arrow points on the outer thigh of a woman in denim shorts, against blue mosaic tiles.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Compass rose on the outer thigh

Geometric · Thigh · Black and grey · Photo

A black ink compass rose sits on the outer thigh, with a central eight-point star, concentric circles and long arrow points extending outwards, one arrow pointing down with a feathered tail. The linework is crisp and even, with solid fills in the star points and no visible shading. The image is in black and grey with a warm skin tone, a pink top, denim shorts and a blue mosaic tile background.

Geometric Thigh Compass Compass rose Arrow Star Circle Geometric

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 wind off the Solway has got under the flagstones again, and you are kneeling in the chapel of Kinnaird Keep with brass dividers in your fist and a sheet of vellum pinned under three stones. Someone has scratched a ring of circles into the wall above the altar, eight rays fanning out from a centre nobody has bothered to mark. Your grandfather would have called it a wind rose and told you the arrows point to the places a man could die of thirst. You have spent the morning measuring it, and the numbers keep coming out wrong.

Keep reading

Each ray sits a degree off from the last, which should not be possible for a thing cut by hand. You draw the rose again on the vellum, true north at the top, and when you lift the dividers the feathered arrow at the bottom seems to lean towards the fallen tower instead of the south. You tell yourself the damp has warped the stone. Then the bell in the broken belfry rings once, though its rope rotted away years ago, and the light through the east window turns amber.

Under the nave, where the floor has dropped into a cellar, you find a second compass set into the flags, its points worn smooth by centuries of feet. Beside it lies a folded map, its ink still wet. It shows this very keep, and a red line running from the arrow's tail down through the cellar and out under the hill. The last word written on it is your own name.

You fold the vellum, tuck it inside your coat and follow the arrow. The needle does not tremble. Somewhere under the hill a door you never knew was there is waiting for someone who can read which way the points are facing.