Fine line black and grey tattoo of a dotted globe hot air balloon carrying a heart suitcase, with the word Wanderlust and a paper plane, on the forearm.

Globe hot air balloon with the word Wanderlust

Fine line · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

The tattoo shows a globe with stippled continents, the North and South American landmasses visible, suspended from ropes and carrying a suitcase marked with a heart. A dashed flight path curves across the globe to a paper plane, and the script word Wanderlust arcs above. The thin single-needle linework is black ink only, with the continents built from dotwork shading against the lighter skin.

Fine line Dotwork Forearm Globe Hot air balloon Heart Paper plane Wanderlust Script Travel Continent

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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

Brother Anselm has left the cloister only twice in forty years, and you are the one who carries his inks down to the scriptorium each morning because your knees are still good. Tell yourself the shaking in his hands is the damp, not the map he has been drawing since Lent. He spreads the vellum across the trestle and weighs its corners with a pumice stone, a Psalter, and the brass dividers that once belonged to a ship's chandler from Bristol.

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On the sheet the world sits like a pale coin. He has stippled the Americas with a fine nib, each freckle of dots placed so slowly that the coastlines seem to have been rained onto the page. Above the coin hangs a balloon on taut ropes, and beneath it a small leather case with a heart pressed into its side. A dotted line leaves the globe and bends toward a paper aeroplane folded from a psalm leaf he tore out in a temper.

You ask where the case is going. He says it goes where the wind goes, which is no answer for a novice, so you press him. He taps the route with his thumb and says every pilgrim is a balloon with a suitcase tied underneath, and the heart is only there to remind the porters to be gentle.

The abbot finds the sheet that evening and holds it to the candle for a long time. In the morning he hands you the map folded into quarters, a purse of coins for the carrier, and a letter for a convent in Lisbon. Keep the line dotted, he says. The rest is yours to finish.