Enlarged with AI from a smaller original
Compass rose with roses design
Dotwork · Black and grey · Flash
A drawn tattoo design of a compass rose with N, E, S and W points, with two shaded roses layered over its centre. A dotted ring runs around the outer circle, and the rose petals are rendered with fine pencil or ink shading. The design is in black and grey and sits centred on a plain sheet of paper, with a clipboard at the top left.
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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction
Mrs Okafor's mother had drawn the compass on the back of a gas bill, and her daughter wanted it copied exactly, dots and all, before the shop on Cable Street shut for the winter. I was the only one left in the studio at half eleven, the radiator ticking, the rain working at the skylight. Nobody else would take the job, so I took it seriously.
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The roses were the difficult part. The mother had sketched them twice, once in May and once in September, and the petals did not agree with each other. I laid tracing paper over both and worked until the shading matched, pressing lightly with the 2B so the grey sat like cloud over the points of north and south. Outside, a bus swung round from Commercial Road and its headlights slid across the ceiling like a slow lighthouse beam.
When I finally stopped it was gone one. The north point was perfect, the N small and sharp, but I had drawn the needle pointing back at the door, the way I had come in, and I could not remember why I had thought that was right. I rubbed it out. This time the front rose turned toward the window, toward the dark lanes and the sleeping docks, and I left it there for her to decide in the morning.
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