Traditional-style tattoo of a yellow banner with a script phrase, a teal ribbon and a teal-tipped arrow on the outer forearm.

Arrow and banner on a forearm

Traditional · Forearm · Colour · Photo

A yellow banner carrying a phrase in script wraps diagonally across the forearm, with a teal ribbon twisting beneath it and a teal-tipped arrow piercing through the top edge. The bold outlines and flat fills of yellow, teal and green give it a classic look, and the design is shown against plain, lightly lit skin with the ends of the banner curling at the edges.

Traditional Lettering Forearm Banner Arrow Ribbon Script Lettering

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 bowyer's bench was still warm when Nell found her father asleep across it, one hand wrapped around a length of yew that had not yet become a bow. She shook his shoulder. Outside, the wedding guests were already stamping up the lane from Cold Ashby, and the miller's boy was coming with them in a borrowed coat that sat badly at the shoulders.

Keep reading

The custom in Harrowmere was old and everyone knew it. The groom must draw the great wedding bow that hung above the church door, and hold it, so the village could see he had the strength to keep a home. Edwin Carr took it down with both hands and set his feet wide. His face went red, then purple. The string did not give. The crowd laughed kindly, and then less kindly, and Edwin's arms began to shake.

Old Maud, who had buried two husbands and was not afraid of anyone, pushed through to the front. "Put it down, lad. Nobody ever got a string back by shouting at it. Strong in the real way, that's what your mother used to say of your father, and it wasn't the arms." Edwin let the bow rest against the doorframe. He looked at Nell, and she saw he had nothing left to pretend with.

Her father took the bow, drew it once with two fingers and no fuss, and handed it back. Then Nell tied a strip of teal silk around the nock of the one arrow her father had finished that morning and gave it to Edwin. He shot it into the apple tree at the lane's end, where it stuck, and the silk hung down in the wind like a banner nobody had bothered to write on.