Black ink drawing of a mandala-style compass rose with lotus motifs, shown as a flash design for a tattoo.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Mandala compass rose tattoo design

Geometric · Black and grey · Flash

The drawing shows a compass rose with an eight-point star at its centre, set within concentric rings of scalloped, beaded and leaf-shaped patterns. Lotus-like ornaments sit at the top, bottom and sides, and the cardinal letters N, E, S and W mark the points. The fine black linework is combined with dotted stippling and solid shading in the star points, all in black ink on paper with no colour.

Geometric Botanical Compass Compass rose Mandala Star Lotus Leaves Dot Letter

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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

Dear Nell, the rain has got into the hall lamp again, so I am writing this at the kitchen table with Mrs Pruett's cat asleep on my notebook. You will laugh, but I have finally drawn the thing you asked for. On Sunday I sat on the back step with a fountain pen and copied the compass rose painted above the dresser in the dining room. Mrs Pruett says her late husband did it in 1931 using a saucer for a template, and I can believe it. Every ring is scalloped or beaded, and the leaves inside the middle circle are so neat they look pressed.

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The eight points are the hard part. You have to shade the long arms solid and leave the short ones white, or the star goes flat as a plate. Mr Hale in room four watched me over his newspaper and said the N was in the wrong place, that north always sits to the left of the dresser clock. I told him the clock has been running slow since the war and he might be the one who is wrong. He did not speak to me until breakfast, when he slid the marmalade across without a word, which I suppose is how men apologise in this town.

I did the little dots last, one for each bead on the outer ring, and when I counted them there were ninety-six, which seemed a kind of message. The lotus shapes at the four ends are the only parts I could not get right. Mine look like tulips left out in the frost.

Tomorrow the tide is due out at seven, so I shall walk the sands before the boarders wake and see whether the real compass has pointed anywhere useful. Keep the drawing safe. I have pinned it inside the lid of my sewing tin, where the old map of the bay used to be. Wherever I set my hand down, it seems to point me home. Your loving sister, Ada.