Black and grey realism tattoo of a pocket compass, quill, coins and a map on an upper arm.

Realistic compass and map sleeve piece

Realism · Upper arm · Black and grey · Photo

A large realistic tattoo shows a pocket compass with a raised needle at the centre, surrounded by two coins, a quill feather, a folded map with compass rose and rhombus lines, and a wax seal at the bottom. Fine shading gives the metal compass casing and coins a polished, three-dimensional look, with soft grey gradients across the map. Handwritten script runs down the upper right edge, and the whole design sits on the skin with the paper elements layered behind the objects.

Realism Upper arm Compass Coin Quill Map Handwriting Compass rose Letter

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 needle would not settle below the three-hundred-fathom level. I stood in the drip and cold of the cross-cut with the brass dial open in my palm, tapping the case, and each time it swung back north-west like a dog told to stay. Pascoe wanted the lode carried east under the chapel field, where the shares were already sold. I had my chain, my lamp and a map on my knee that said he was right, and I had my own bearings, which said otherwise.

Keep reading

That night, at the kitchen table in Camborne with my boots steaming by the range, I cut a fresh quill and wrote to my sister, since she is the only one who reads my hand without complaint. I drew the true line in fine ink, the one the needle had given me, and beside it a small compass rose of thirty-two points, so she would know which way was north. I did not draw the chapel field. My fingers were stiff and the nib spat, and I blotted each sentence twice before I trusted it.

Pascoe came for the plans in the morning. He turned the sheet to the window, saw the second line and laughed the way men laugh at a fool who has spent his wages on a hymnbook. I let him keep the original. The copy I had already folded, sealed in red wax with my father's ring and posted to the mining inspector's office in Truro, where a clerk named Ellis still reads things properly.

Three weeks later the chapel field was sold to a company from London, and the east drift stood dry and empty as a church with the bell taken down. The seal still carries the mark of my thumb, a small moon pressed into the red, and on a clear morning the needle still points straight at it.