Small black compass rose tattoo with N, E, S and W points in fine line style on the upper back of a woman with her hands in her hair.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Compass rose tattoo on upper back

Fine line · Back · Black and grey · Photo

A woman is photographed from behind, with both hands raised into her hair, showing a small compass rose tattoo centred on her upper back below the nape. The design uses fine black linework with stippled shading in the star points and a dotted central ring, and the cardinal letters are set around the outer edge. The composition is outdoors against blurred green trees and warm sunlight, with a cream crocheted top and a thin chain visible.

Fine line Geometric Back Compass Compass rose Cardinal points North Necklace

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 boats from the outer shoals were late again, and the harbour lamp was already lit when Hesper the mapmaker came up the stone steps with a bronze disc wrapped in sailcloth. He set it on the wall between two jars of salt and unwrapped it slowly, the way a man uncovers a sleeping child. Eight points ran out from the centre like spokes, and the four greatest were marked with letters cut so deep that the lamplight pooled in them.

Keep reading

"Where did you find the north?" asked Ysolt, the girl who swept the quay. Hesper laughed, because nobody had found it. His grandmother had cast the disc from a stone that fell out of the sky, then ground every point by hand through one whole winter, pricking the star-rays with a bone needle so the shading would hold against salt air. Each dot was a night she had spent awake counting the sea.

"The rose only points true in the hands of someone who has not yet decided to leave," Hesper said, and he set the needle spinning. It wobbled, slowed, and settled on the cut letter with a small click. Ysolt put her broom down. She had a brother on the outer shoals and a boat that would not sail without her, and she had told nobody she meant to go over the water at the spring tide.

That night the fleet came through the fog by the lamp and the bronze, every hull turning towards the same bright point. In the morning the disc lay wrapped on the wall again, and Ysolt's broom leaned in its corner, its handle worn pale where a hand had held it for years.