Hand-drawn sketch in purple pen of a compass rose surrounded by flowers, buds and leaves, a flash design for a tattoo.

Compass rose with flowers and buds

Botanical · Mixed · Flash

A pen sketch of a compass rose with an eight-point star inside a ringed dial, with the letters N, E, S and W marking the directions. Loose flower heads, buds and leaves climb a curving stem on the left and top, drawn with soft, hatched shading. The drawing is in purple ink on a pale paper background and is centred in the frame.

Botanical Compass Compass rose Flower Bud Leaf Stem Letter

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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

Right, listen up, the rain's come in sideways again and the rest of you can hold your umbrellas over your own heads. I've got a compass on the lost table, a proper brass-ringed thing, and it's been pointing south-east since Tuesday, which the clockmaker says is impossible and the fishmonger says is obvious. Whoever left it, the back is scratched with a stem of little flowers and a line that says KEEP WALKING, so I'm guessing you were a walker.

Keep reading

Marta from the bric-a-brac stall swears it belonged to a woman who sold pressed flowers by the canal gate. Every Saturday she'd sit under the awning with her buds in tin cups and her coat buttoned to the chin, and every Saturday she'd turn the needle over in her palm before she counted out change. Nobody ever asked her where she was going. You don't, in this city. You just notice which way she faces when she leaves.

So if that's yours, come and get it before the wind picks the stall up and carries it down to the river. Tell me which way you're headed and I'll tell you if the needle agrees. It usually does, in the end. It just takes its time deciding which direction counts as home.