Small fine line black compass rose tattoo with N, E, S and W letters on a forearm, in a black and white photo.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Compass rose tattoo on a wrist

Fine line · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

A black and white photo shows a small compass rose tattoo on the inner wrist of a person wearing a chunky knit cable sweater. The compass has a fine black outline, a star-shaped rose and the letters N, E, S and W at the points. The soft grey background and sleeves keep the focus on the tattoo.

Fine line Geometric Forearm Compass Compass rose North East South West Bracelet

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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

The nib had gone soft at the tip, and Ada Crewe spent a full hour trying to ink a clean north point before she admitted it. Old Tobias Marr would have swatted her hand away and reground it on the whetstone without a word, the way he did everything, but Tobias had been dead a fortnight and the shop above the fish market still smelt of him, pipe ash and linseed oil.

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Outside, the fog had come up the harbour wall and sat on the water like wet wool. Captain Eli Stroud was waiting on the quay for the chart of the northern shoals, and he would not sail the Morwen without it. Ada drew the rose slowly: eight points, long and short, radiating from a single small circle. She set the N at the top, the E to the right, the S beneath, the W to the left. Tobias used to say the letters were not decoration. They were the promise that the ground stayed where you left it, even when you could not see your own bow.

When she finished, she blotted the ink and watched it dry from black to a dull slate grey. Stroud climbed the stairs with his cap crushed in one fist. He did not read the chart. He ran his thumb along the W and grunted. "Wrong way round, lass? Fog plays tricks with a man's eyes."

"No," Ada said. "Tobias always put the east where the sun comes up, fog or no fog."

Stroud laughed, rolled the sheet tight, and tucked it under his arm. When the stairs had stopped creaking, Ada took a fresh sheet from the drawer, dipped the nib, and drew a small rose in the margin, the way Tobias always had. She left the other three letters off and wrote only the one she was sure of, at the top where it had always been: N.