Fine line black compass rose tattoo with N, E, S and W letters on the heel of a foot.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Compass rose tattoo on a heel

Fine line · Other · Black and grey · Photo

A small compass rose sits on the heel of a bare foot, with a dotted circle at its centre and arrow points extending north, south, east and west. The letters N, E, S and W label the points, and the thin, even black linework is shown against pale skin on a white sheet. The tattoo is shown in sharp focus and sits in the centre of the frame.

Fine line Other Compass Compass rose Arrow Letter

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 compass on the dashboard had been stuck on south since Coober Pedy, so you navigated by the sun, the telegraph poles and the bleached tyre someone had nailed to a fence post. Your sister Nell had drawn the route on the back of a fuel receipt. Ninety miles of gravel, she'd written, then a left where the salt pan begins. Do not trust the signs.

Keep reading

The turn came sooner than the receipt said. You missed it, drove on for an hour with the windows down and the dust coming in like flour, then stopped beside a dead mulga and checked the sun against your watch the way Dad taught you on the boat. Shadow pointing east at noon. Nell had been right about the mulga, and about most things. You stood in the heat with the map flat on the bonnet, the letters blurring, N, E, S, W, the arrows pointing everywhere at once, and you laughed out loud because there was nobody to hear.

You walked. The wind combed the grass into long grey lines. Past the second ridge there was a cairn of white stones, and under it a biscuit tin holding a torn road atlas page and a pencil stub. Someone had scratched a small rose into the lid, and beneath it, in capitals, WHERE YOU ARE.

You wrote your name under the words, then turned the lid so its arrows pointed back the way you had come, towards the car and the long shimmer of the road, and you left the pencil where the next person would find it.