Black fine line compass cross tattoo with the letters M, S, N and A on the inner forearm of a man with visible arm hair.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Fine line compass cross on a forearm

Fine line · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

A thin black line compass cross sits across the inner forearm, with two lines crossing at the centre and a letter placed in each quadrant. The linework is delicate and even, with no shading, and the ink is solid black against pale skin. The tattoo is centred on the forearm against a plain light background.

Fine line Geometric Forearm Compass Cross Letter Line

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 card had come off the binnacle in the gale off Finisterre, and by the time the mate found it wedged under the galley step, the letters had worn to scratches. Old Tobias Renshaw swore the points were still there. He had cut them himself in Deptford twenty years back, with a graver borrowed from an instrument maker's widow.

Keep reading

'North is north,' he said, turning the brass disc in his palm as if it might answer. 'Everything else is opinion.' The boy, Carrick, was eleven and had been sick twice since Lisbon. He held the chalk while Renshaw drew two lines across the planks of the wheelhouse floor, crossing where the compass pin had always sat, and then he knelt with a stub of pencil and asked what the letters ought to be.

They argued it over a pot of tea gone cold. Renshaw wanted the four winds written as they had always been. Carrick pointed out that the card had been made for a ship bound for Halifax, and the captain kept his log in a different hand altogether. Renshaw went quiet, then took the chalk and wrote an M in the top left for the Marsh light they had left behind, an S where the sun went down, an N low on the right for the ice, and an A in the last corner for the anchorage they hoped to find.

When the mist lifted off the Banks three days later, the boy stood at the wheel with his arm out straight, the way Renshaw had taught him, and read the quarters by their letters. Nobody aboard asked why the N sat so low. It was enough that the crossing lines still pointed true.