Two versions of a tattoo design showing a pocket watch, compass, roses and chain, with a ribbon reading not all those who wander are lost, one in line work and one shaded.

Pocket watch, compass and roses tattoo design

Realism · Black and grey · Flash

The sheet shows the same tattoo design twice, side by side: a pocket watch on a looping chain, a compass rose with a banner reading "Not all those who wander are lost", and two roses. The left version is drawn in fine outline work, while the right version adds grey shading and tonal depth to the watch face, roses and compass. The design is arranged in a vertical composition on a plain white background.

Realism Pocket watch Compass Rose Chain Ribbon Banner Clock Lettering

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

Mara had the watch open on the chart table when the drift alarm went, its brass lid propped against a coil of cable. Forty years of ship's time ticked inside it, a little slow, the way everything aboard the Halewell ran slow after the second spin. Outside the viewport the nebula Ruth had named after a bad cup of tea slid past like wet paper.

Keep reading

The compass on the bulkhead had gone mad. Its needle, set to the old magnetic north of the homeworld, swung in lazy circles and then stopped, pointing dead at the dark patch where the charts ran out. Ruth had pinned the banner above it years ago, hand-lettered on salvaged foil: Not all those who wander are lost. Mara had always thought it a smug thing to hang on a wall.

She pulled up the survey logs and found the name Ruth had never mentioned. Idris Vale, cartographer, first generation, had gone out past the charted rim in a one-man skiff with a pocket watch, a compass and a sack of rose cuttings for whatever world he found. The logs stopped mid-sentence. The last entry was a bearing, and the bearing pointed where the needle pointed now.

Mara wound the watch until it clicked, set it to the drift clock, and turned the chart over. On the back she wrote the bearing in pencil, then underneath it, in her own rough hand, a single line: going to see if he was right.