Black and grey fine line tattoo of a world map outline with a small aeroplane and a compass rose on the inner upper arm.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

World map outline and compass on upper arm

Fine line · Upper arm · Black and grey · Photo

The tattoo shows a continuous outline of the continents, including the Americas, Africa, Europe, Asia and Australia, with a small aeroplane drawn over the Atlantic. A compass rose with N, E, S and W labels sits to the right of the map. The work uses thin, even black linework with no shading, set against pale skin and a dark fabric background.

Fine line Upper arm World map Continent Compass Compass rose Aeroplane Travel

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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

You don't lift the pen, Maureen used to say, not once, or the sea gets in and the coastline goes soft. That was the rule at the drawing office in Derby, and I kept it for thirty-one years, through the road atlases and the wall maps nobody asked for. So when our Clare rang in March to say she'd got a place in Sydney, I bought a roll of linen tracing paper and a fine nib from the stationers on Friday, and I hardly slept.

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I started at the top, at the edge of the Arctic, and the line ran east over the Canadian islands, down the Americas like a slow river, then across the Atlantic to the bulge of Africa. Clare came in on the Saturday with a cup of tea going cold in her hands and watched me work. She said I'd put the Horn of Africa too far east. I said that was exactly the sort of thing a daughter notices. She laughed at me, which was the point.

The aeroplane was her idea. I'd left the Atlantic bare, and she tapped the paper and said that's where she'd be, window seat, eating a biscuit she wasn't supposed to have. So I drew a small plane over the water, nose pointing west, and wrote nothing beside it. Below the coastlines I put a compass rose with four points, because she'd always said you could find your way home from anywhere if you knew which way was north.

She flew on the Tuesday. The paper hangs in the hall now, framed under glass, and the line runs unbroken from the Arctic all the way round to New Zealand. I never told her the Pacific stretch took me three attempts and a great deal of swearing. Some things a father keeps for himself, along with the biscuit.