Black fine line outline of the world map tattooed across a woman's upper back, seen from behind against patterned wallpaper.

World map outline tattoo on upper back

Fine line · Back · Black and grey · Photo

A woman with long dark hair, seen from behind with her head and face out of frame, shows a black outline tattoo of the world map across her upper back. The linework is thin and even, drawing the continents without shading. The tattoo is the only colour detail against a cream wallpaper printed with black floral vines.

Fine line Back World map Continent Outline Woman Long hair Back

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 snow shut the pass on the third of December, and by the fourth the only guest left at the Lantern Inn was Mr Osei Brandt, a surveyor trying to reach Kendal. He took the end table nearest the fire and worked there every evening with a pencil and a stack of blank sheets. My mother ran the bar and said he drew the way other men prayed, without looking up.

Keep reading

The parlour was papered in cream with black vines that climbed the walls in stripes, and Mr Brandt complained that the little flowers were out of true. He would hold his pencil against them as if he were measuring. On the sixth night he asked me for the ink pot from the back shelf and a steady hand to hold the lamp. I did not understand what he wanted with the whole world on a sheet of paper, but he drew it in one unbroken line, the coasts and the islands and the long stretch of the Pacific, and he would not shade a single bay. "Shading is for people who want to pretend the land is close," he said.

On the last night the thaw had started, dripping from the eaves in a rhythm I could hear from the kitchen. He pinned the drawing to the wall above the fire, over a patch of vines, and told me to put my finger on wherever I would go. I chose the empty stretch at the bottom edge of the sheet, where the ink stopped and there was nothing but cream paper. He laughed and said that was the only honest answer he had ever been given. The road reopened on the tenth morning, and his cart was gone before the sun was up, but the map stayed pinned where he left it, and I still look at it each time the wind comes down off the fells.