Inner forearm with the word WILDERNESS in serif capitals, a long thin diagonal line with a small circle, and a small fine line mark near the top.

Wilderness lettering and fine line on forearm

Fine line · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

A close photograph of a forearm with the word WILDERNESS in upright serif capitals above a long, thin diagonal line that passes through a small open circle. A small fine line mark sits near the top edge of the arm. The ink is solid black with clean, precise linework on light skin, and the arm fills the frame against a white top and a grey and white floor.

Fine line Lettering Geometric Forearm Lettering Circle Line

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 chart was already spread across the kitchen table when Dad came in off the tide, its corners held down by the teapot, the marmalade and his good pencil. He had drawn one ruled line across it, from the breakwater light up to the bald top of Scarrow Head, and where it crossed the contour rings he had inked a small open circle.

Keep reading

'That's a bearing,' he said, 'not a path. Nobody walks a bearing.' I asked why he had drawn it then. He tapped the margin, where in his cramped capitals he had written WILDERNESS and underlined it twice, the way you would mark a station you meant to hold on to.

I walked it the following Saturday with the chart folded inside my coat. The line led me through gorse, over a stile that had lost its top rail, and across a bog that sucked at my boots as though it had a word of its own to say. At the circle there was only a bench mark bolted into a grey slab, half under lichen, and a sheep watching me as if I were late for something.

I took the pencil from my pocket and drew a short line beside his, then rubbed out nothing. Dad had never got lost out there. He had only ever been unsure where the map stopped. I folded the chart along its creases, weighted it with a pebble on the slab, and left it for whoever came after me to take the bearing from here.