Black linework compass rose with a small S marker, set over teal, pink and red watercolour splashes and a thin red circle, on the inner forearm.

Watercolour compass rose on a forearm

Forearm · Mixed · Photo

A compass rose is drawn in black linework with an S marking at the top, its points sketched with loose, slightly broken lines. Behind and around it, teal, pink and red watercolour-style washes spread across the skin, with fine red and dashed black circles overlapping the design. Colour ink dominates the composition, which is photographed close up at an angle on a patterned bed.

Forearm Compass Compass rose Watercolour Splash Circle Star

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The ink had run before the rain did. You had spent three nights at the chart table of the Marguerite, drawing the compass rose in black with a steel nib, and the damp of the Bay of Biscay kept softening the lines into something you could not trust. Captain Halloran came down at four bells, looked over your shoulder at the rose with its S pointing up at the lamp, and said that was the wrong way round for a sailor. Then he laughed and said the sea would not mind.

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The next morning a wave came over the bow and drowned the inkwell. Watercolour was what you had instead: a cake of teal from the purser's box, a pink meant for the bosun's wife's letters, a red you kept for marking dangers. You dabbed them on wet paper and watched them spread like weather across the chart, teal pooling where the Azores should have been. You drew the dashed line of the intended course around the rose, and the red circle the mate insisted was a storm warning, and when the sun finally came out you could not tell which of the colours was the sea.

Land came up at Lisbon on the thirteenth day, grey as slate. The captain took the chart from you, held it to the window and was quiet for a long time. Then he pinned it above the wheel, south at the top, and told the new boy that anyone who could find north from that page could find their way home from anywhere. You kept the brushes. Years later you still draw the rose with its south at the top, because that is how the water looked from the deck.