Compass rose tattoo on the inner forearm, drawn in black linework with a soft blue watercolour wash behind it.

Compass rose with blue watercolour wash

Fine line · Forearm · Mixed · Photo

A black compass rose sits at the centre of the design, with an outer ring, a thin vertical needle running above and below it, and the letters N, E, S and W marking the points. The linework is fine and precise, while the blue shading is loose and washed out at the edges, giving a watercolour effect. The design runs vertically down the forearm and is shot against a plain white bed sheet.

Fine line Forearm Compass Compass rose Needle Cardinal points

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The needle had been bent since the winter the Morag went down, and Old Ina would not let anyone straighten it. A true needle, she said, points true. It is only the sea that lies, and a bent needle is honest about that.

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Her grandson Tomas took the brass compass with him when he sailed west for the cod banks at the start of the lean season. For nine days the weather held them in a grey hush, and the water under the hull went from green to the colour of thin ink. The card never moved, and the needle sat crooked above the N like a finger pointing at something he could not see. On the tenth morning the mist tore open, and the sea around them was a clear pale blue, washed out at its edges, shallow over sand he had never sounded.

He put the boat on the needle's line. By noon they were in a bay with a single stone pier and a ferry lying on its side in the shallows, its name half lost under weed. Inside the wheelhouse a brass bell hung from a hook, and on its rim someone had scratched the letters N, E, S and W, the same as on the card in his hand.

Tomas rang it once for the drowned and once for his grandmother, then turned the boat for home. When he reached the harbour Ina was waiting on the wall, and she held out her palm for the compass without a word. The needle was still bent. She said nothing about it, and neither did he.