Black and grey fine line tattoo of a world map outline on the inside of a wrist, with a raised hand and knitted jumper sleeve.

World map outline on a wrist

Fine line · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

A single-line outline of a world map runs across the inner wrist, showing continents such as Africa, Europe and Asia. The linework is thin and even, with no shading, and the ink is solid black against the skin. The photograph is in black and white and frames the wrist with the hand raised above a knitted grey sleeve.

Fine line Forearm World map Continent Map Outline Africa

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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 tracing paper had gone soft at the corners from being lifted and laid down so many times, and Marjorie Quill had stopped apologising for the smudges. Mr Hollis wanted the coastline of the new globe copied by Friday, every inlet and peninsula, and he would not accept a line that wobbled. She worked with a steel nib and a ruler she had filed herself, pressing so lightly the ink barely sank into the grain.

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Africa came first, because it sat squarely in the middle of the sheet and asked for nothing but patience. The coast there was simple, a long shrug of sand, and she could do it in one unbroken pass. Europe was harder. It crumpled and frayed at every edge, bays inside bays, the Baltic a thin cold thread she had to lift the nib for twice. Hollis came by at four, looked over her shoulder, and said the Mediterranean looked like a dropped stitch.

She did not fix it. She went home that night with the sheet folded inside her coat and laid it over the kitchen table beside her brother's compass, which had stopped working when he went to sea. Rain tapped the window. She traced the outline with her finger, slowly, from the Cape round to the top of Asia, and found that the line closed without any help from her at all. The island at the bottom was the last thing she inked, a small teardrop she left unfinished on purpose, so that someone might one day ask her where it went.