Black and grey realism sleeve on an upper arm and forearm showing a crowned skull, smoke, a world map and a compass.

Crowned skull and compass sleeve

Realism · Upper arm · Black and grey · Photo

A large skull wearing an ornate crown with fleur-de-lis details sits on the upper arm, with wisps of smoke curling beneath it. Lower down, a detailed compass rests over a faded world map that continues onto the forearm. The shading is smooth and highly detailed, with strong contrast between the bone highlights and deep shadows.

Realism Upper arm Forearm Skull Crown Compass Map Smoke

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

Sit closer, the fire will only last another hour and I'll not waste wood on children who fidget. You know the chart-maker's house at the bottom of Hollin Lane? Nobody has lived in it since the spring flood, but on still nights a lamp burns in the upstairs window. That is where the old king's surveyor went, the year the river ran backwards.

Keep reading

Tobias Fenwick was a quiet man who drew every hedge and footpath in the parish. The king, who wore his gold crown even at supper, sent for him and asked for the whole world on one sheet of vellum, sea and far mountains included. Tobias said he could do it, but the paper needed a centre, and the centre was the brass compass his father had carried across the salt. He pinned its needle in the middle of the sheet and told the king it would only point true for a man who had lost something.

So the king gave him a year. Each night the smoke from Tobias's chimney rolled out over the vellum and smudged the coastlines grey, and each morning he scraped the soot away and began again. When the year was up, the king came for his map and found his own kingdom rubbed out to a smear. Tobias sat at the table with the lamp hissing beside him, and the crown had slipped down over the king's eyes, and nobody ever learned which of them had been holding the pen.

They say the compass still turns in that room. If you climb up with a candle you'll see the needle lean towards your own chest, and the smoke curling round your ankles, and a crown lying on the boards, cold as a grave stone. Mind the stair, it's rotten. Now, who wants the next one?