Close-up of a forearm with a fine-line white ink outline of the world map, showing the continents and scattered islands.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

World map outline on a forearm

Fine line · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

The photograph shows a close-up of a forearm with a fine, continuous outline of the world map, with the continents and scattered islands drawn in light, near-white ink. The linework is thin and even, and the map fills most of the visible skin. The warm tan skin tone and pale, softly lit background make the pale lines stand out clearly.

Fine line Forearm World map Continent Island

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 suitcase came off the 16:40 from Carlisle with its handle taped in three places and a brass lock that would not give. Ruth Okonedo tried it with a hairpin, then a bent teaspoon from the lost property kettle, and finally sat on the bench with it across her knees while the platform emptied around her. Trains left for Leeds and Glasgow. Nobody had claimed it since Friday.

Keep reading

When the lock finally gave, the case held a tin of drawing pencils, a sandwich in greaseproof paper that had long since gone to nothing, and a sheet of tracing paper folded into eighths. Unfolded, it was the world. Every coastline had been traced in pale pencil, the continents shouldered together, and small islands were scattered across the sea like crumbs. In the margin, in careful capitals, someone had written TRACE IT AGAIN WHEN YOU GET BACK.

She found a return address pasted inside the lid, a flat above a chip shop in Hull. The reply came a week later on lined paper. The man had been a merchant seaman before he became a signalman, the letter said, and he traced the same map every time he went away, because it was never quite finished. His daughter had kept the tracing but not the case. He always said the islands were the bits you had to go back for.

Ruth folded the sheet along its old creases and slid it back into the case. She did not post it on. Instead she set the case on the high shelf above the kettle, where it could see the platform, and each evening when the last train pulled out she traced its outline in the air with one finger.