Fine line black outline tattoo of a world map on the inner wrist, with a woven bracelet and a green knitted sleeve visible.

World map outline on a wrist

Fine line · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

A close photograph of a hand and wrist showing a black outline tattoo of the world map, with continents drawn as thin single lines. The linework is fine and even with no shading, and the design sits on the inner wrist, extending toward the forearm. The image is in natural colour with a grey pavement background, a green knitted sleeve and a blue-painted fingernail visible.

Fine line Forearm World map Continent Map Outline

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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

The rain had got into the marquee by the time the speeches started, and Dad's seating plan had gone soft at the corners from people fanning themselves with it. I was holding the easel steady while Gran Ivy edged towards the microphone with her stick hooked over one arm, because she had insisted on giving her gift herself and nobody in the family had the nerve to argue.

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She had lived above a chemist in Hull for forty years and never been further than Benidorm, but she had spent the winter tracing the world from an old atlas with a propelling pencil. Her line was so light it looked like breath on glass. The sheet she unfolded showed the continents only, no borders, the sea left blank, and she said the bride could take it to the tattooist on Monday and have it inked small on the inside of her wrist, where she would see it every time she checked a train time.

The tattooist, a quiet man in a back room off Bridlington Road, wanted to know which way up it should sit. Gran had not thought of that. We stood round his bench, the bride and I and Gran's sister, turning the tracing like a compass until the Atlantic ran across the wrist bones and the Americas curled towards the elbow. "Start with the line that matters most," he said, and the bride said, "Hull," and everyone laughed, and he began anyway, one unbroken stroke at a time.

Afterwards Gran pressed the tracing into my hand and said the paper was mine to keep, since I would be the one drawing the next one. It lives in my kitchen drawer now, folded in eighths. The ink went wherever the bride went, and that, Gran said, was the only sort of map worth having.