Realistic black and grey forearm tattoo of a compass, sailing ships and a letter with a red wax seal, placed on the inner forearm.

Compass, ships and sealed letter on a forearm

Realism · Forearm · Mixed · Photo

A photographed forearm shows a large realistic compass at the centre, with a pocket watch and wispy smoke-like shading behind it. Sailing ships and a folded letter with a red wax seal sit lower down, shaded in soft greys with fine highlights. The compass and ships are rendered in black and grey, with the small red seal as the only strong colour against a plain grey sleeve and studio equipment in the background.

Realism Forearm Compass Sailing ship Letter Pocket watch Smoke Map Cloud

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 letter came in the wet week of March, sealed in red wax that had never been broken, addressed to the *Margaret Lowe* in care of the harbourmaster at Whitby. Her master had been dead nine years. I know, because I signed for his effects, and I put his pocket watch on the mantel that night and did not wind it.

Keep reading

Mrs Tennant at the post office would not take the letter back. She turned the envelope over twice and said the hand was her husband's, though Tom Tennant had never written anything in his life that wasn't about tallow or tide. I carried it up the East Cliff in the rain with the brass compass case tucked under my arm, the one that had been Captain Lowe's, and I sat on the churchyard wall above the fish quay and broke the seal with my thumb.

There was no love in it, and no name. Inside was a chart of the bay drawn in brown ink, every sounding marked, and a small ring drawn over the place where the Scar runs out under the water. Beneath the ring, in a hand I had seen on a thousand invoices, someone had written: *Tell the widow I held the wind as long as I could.* Three ships were sketched along the margin, sails full, all of them sailing away from the ring.

I opened the compass case on my knee. The needle swung, shivered, and settled north-north-east, straight at the ring on the chart. I took out the watch from my coat, the one I had not wound, and held it to my ear. It had stopped at the very hour the *Margaret* went down. I wound it until the spring bit, set it going against my chest, and walked down the cliff path to tell Mrs Lowe the wind had finally let him come home.