Small fine line black tattoo of an ampersand with an arrow piercing it, placed on the inner forearm.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Ampersand with arrow on a forearm

Fine line · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

A small black ampersand with a simple arrow passing through its lower right side sits on the inner forearm against pale skin. The outline is a single thin, even line with slightly uneven edges, and there is no shading or fill. The tattoo is centred on a plain, softly lit background with dark fabric or shadow at the edges.

Fine line Forearm Ampersand Arrow Symbol Line drawing

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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

Mabel Tranter had painted shop fascias for twenty-two years and still could not make an ampersand sit right first time. She practised them on sheets of newspaper at the back of the workshop in Margate, the brush loaded with white and then black, while the wireless on the shelf played dance band numbers loud enough to rattle the jars. Her brother Ted said it was only two loops and a tail. Her father had said the same, and he had been wrong about most things except lettering.

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The commission came on a wet Tuesday from the Pavilion Ballroom, which wanted a new board above the side door reading Saturday & Sunday, with an arrow pointing down the lane toward the queue. The manager, a thin man called Mr Ogden, stood dripping in the doorway and insisted the arrow must cut through the ampersand itself, not sit beside it, so that nobody could mistake which way the dancing lay. Mabel did not mention how many arrows she had seen pointing nowhere useful over the years.

She painted it on the Saturday morning while the hall still smelt of floor wax and last night's cigarettes. The first loop came out lopsided. She wiped it away, breathed out, and did it again, letting the brush carry the weight of the curve. When the arrow slid through the lower bowl, clean and sharp, she laughed out loud, and a girl sweeping the floor below looked up to ask what was so funny.

That evening the band struck up and the queue ran down the lane past the new sign. Mabel stood in it with her coat buttoned to the neck, deciding whether, for once, she would go in.