Black blackwork tattoo of an archer drawing a bow with swirling ornamental lines, placed on the lower leg above the ankle.

Archer and bow tattoo on lower leg

Blackwork · Ankle · Black and grey · Photo

A solid black tattoo shows a stylised figure drawing a bow, with an arrow extending diagonally across the design. Bold silhouetted shapes are combined with thin curling swirl lines that frame the bow and the figure. The image is a close photograph of the leg against a pale blue bedsheet, with the design shown in black ink only.

Blackwork Ankle Bow Arrow Swirl Figure

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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

Sit closer, all of you, and mind the sparks. No, Tamsin, the tale doesn't change because you've heard it before. The archer was called Oswy Harrow, and she kept the last dry ridge above Salt Mere, back when the sea had swallowed the lowlands and grandmothers still had a word for rain that fell sideways.

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Gulls the size of dogs had taken to nesting in the drying racks, and the river-towns paid their salt tithe only when the racks were clean. Oswy drew a bow strung with twisted gut and fitted with brass scrolls that hummed when she loosed. Her arrows flew so true that the surveyors in the high tower swore she was reading lines the rest of them could not see. The Governor's men came up the ridge with a silver flask and a bag of coins, and asked her to clear the birds. She looked at the coins, then at the sea, and named her price: one arrow, and a promise that salt would be shared at the mere, not hoarded in the tower.

They laughed and agreed, because men who laugh at a bargain rarely read the small print of the sky. Oswy set her feet in the wet shale, drew until the string sang, and loosed the arrow over the tower roof. Nobody saw where it fell. But that evening the mere began to fill with fresh water, and the gulls lifted off the racks as if somebody had called them by name, and the Governor found his cellar floor wet with a spring no map had ever shown.

So when you go down to the shore at dusk and see a long-legged runner's tracks in the mud, heading inland, don't follow them. Oswy is still keeping her side of the bargain. Now bank the fire, Tamsin, because the wind is going round to the west, and somebody has to hold the ridge before morning.