Black outline tattoo of a world map across the inner forearm, with a wristwatch showing a map dial worn on the wrist beside it.

World map outline on a forearm

Fine line · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

A forearm carries a thin black outline tattoo of the world map, showing the Americas, Africa, Europe, Asia and Australia with no interior shading. The ink is slightly soft-edged and greyish on pale skin. A brown leather strapped watch with a map-patterned dial sits on the wrist at the right of the frame, and the background is blurred.

Fine line Forearm World map Continent Map Outline Watch

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

You find the rings in the inside pocket of a coat hung in the vestry, wrapped in an old bus ticket from Cardiff. Your brother Tom has lost them twice already this week, once in a hedge and once in the car park of the Co-op. You slip them into your waistcoat and check your watch, its brown strap cracked where the buckle sits, the dial a faded map that your grandfather bought from a jumble stall in Penzance. It says twenty to two. The vicar said two.

Keep reading

The marquee smells of cut grass and gravy. Your Aunt Bronwen is already weeping by the cake table, though nothing has happened yet, and a cousin's toddler is trying to fold a paper napkin into a boat. You think about your grandfather tracing coastlines with a biro on the backs of envelopes, always starting with Africa, because he said its outline was the only one that didn't pretend to be something else. You had forgotten that until the bus ticket reminded you.

At two you walk Tom up the aisle with the rings, and the room turns to look at him, not at you. Nobody notices the watch except you. Afterwards, under the fairy lights, he asks what time it is. You tell him the truth, that it runs a little slow, which is why you have never once been late for anything that mattered. He laughs and says that is the most Welsh thing you have ever said. Then he hands you a folded scrap from his breast pocket, the ink on it blurred as though it has been carried a long way: thanks for keeping the time.