Fine line black tattoo of an arrow crossing a bow outline with dotted triangle and circles, on the inside of a forearm.

Arrow and bow outline on a forearm

Fine line · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

A single arrow runs diagonally across the skin, with a bow drawn as a thin curved outline and a feathered fletching at the top. Dotted construction lines form a triangle and two overlapping dotted circles behind the bow, giving a geometric, technical feel. The tattoo is rendered in fine black linework on pale skin against a dark background, with no colour and no shading.

Fine line Geometric Forearm Arrow Bow Triangle Circle Dotted line Geometric

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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

Rain came sideways through the gap in the awning, and Mr Haddow kept his drawing board under his coat like a lamb. I was sixteen, holding the corner of the tracing paper with two fingers while my hands went white with cold, and the stallholders either side of us packed up their brass scales and swore at the sky.

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He had held the same pitch on Saturdays since before the market roof was rebuilt. Stall nine, between a man who sold secondhand fishing reels and a woman with a tray of unlabelled jam. Haddow measured everything: the width of the stall, the angle of the rain, the number of steps from the bus stop. He said a shot was only ever geometry with a bad temper. Each morning he drew the same triangle in pencil, two circles overlapping like a pair of spectacles, and then a bow across them with a ruler whose numbers had worn away.

I asked him once why the dotted lines were never inked. He said construction was for thinking and ink was for when you were sure. On the last Saturday in October, with the wind tearing at the canvas, he finally uncapped his pen. He did not draw the bow. He drew the arrow first, running straight through the middle of his circles, with feathers at the top like a flag nobody had raised.

When the stalls were shutting, he showed me the place where the line crossed the far edge of the triangle. 'That's where I'd have loosed it,' he said, 'if the wall had been further off.' Then he folded the sheet into quarters, buttoned it into his inside pocket, and walked home through the wet with the arrow still pointing past the bins.