Black and grey fine line compass tattoo with arrows and cardinal points on the forearm.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Compass tattoo on a forearm

Fine line · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

A fine line compass sits on the inner forearm, with the letters N, E, S and W at the cardinal points and small arrows circling the outer rings. The linework is thin and precise, with light shading in the central circles. The tattoo is shown in black and grey, centred in a close, slightly angled photograph against a blurred background.

Fine line Geometric Forearm Compass Arrow Cardinal points Circle Letter

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

Dear Tomasz, the wind has gone round to the north-east again and Mrs Pryce's gull has taken the lamp housing for its own, so I have been sleeping in the watch room with my boots on. Your brass compass is still bolted to the bench where you left it. Each morning I check the needle against the sun the way you showed me, and each morning it agrees with itself, which is more than the tide tables manage.

Keep reading

It's the arrows on the outer ring I can't stop looking at. You drew them with a ruler on the back of a spoiled chart, little curved hooks chasing one another round the card, and told me they were the currents, not the bearings. I took it for one of your jokes. Then on Tuesday the fog came down at four, the bell buoy went quiet, and I stood at the rail with my eyes closed following those hooks round in my head until I could feel which way the water was pulling the Marian towards the bar.

She came in at first light, low and sulky but whole. The mate, a red-bearded man from Lerwick who has never once thanked a lighthouse for anything, asked who had charted the sandbar so well. I said nobody, only guesswork and an old pencil. He snorted and said it was the first honest answer he'd had from a lamp in twenty years.

Keep the arrows as they are when you come home. I would rather you didn't correct my hand, and I would rather you didn't take the compass back with you when you go. Come in by the curve, not the straight line. The gull will want to meet you.