Black geometric arrow tattoo with a compass medallion running vertically down the centre of a woman's upper back.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Arrow and compass down the spine

Geometric · Back · Black and grey · Photo

A vertical arrow with a feathered head and a star-like compass medallion at its centre, with a fletched tail and arrowhead below, is tattooed along the midline of the upper back. The design is rendered in solid black ink with crisp linework and fine internal detailing in the compass rose. The photograph is framed from behind, with the subject's head cropped at the neck and a white strapless top visible at the bottom edge.

Geometric Blackwork Back Arrow Compass Star Feather Spine

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 geese came down on the top field in the first hard frost, and Dad said we'd pluck the wing feathers before the thaw, because Granddad always said goose was for fletching and not for the table. I was nine and mostly interested in the cold creeping through my wellies. We sat in the lean-to with the paraffin heater ticking and a bucket of grey feathers between us, and Granddad's old fletching jig clamped to the bench where it had stood since before the milk parlour was built.

Keep reading

He showed me how to cut the vanes, how to bind them with waxed thread at the nock, and how each feather had to lean the same way so the shaft would spin true. "Set a feather straight and the arrow wanders," he said. "Set it to the lean and it'll find its own road." He kept a brass compass on a leather cord that he'd carried up the hill since the war, and he hung it from a nail above the bench so it turned slowly while we worked, settling each time on north.

We finished the last arrow in February, the week after the lambing had gone quiet. Dad held the shaft up to the window while I stood back with the compass in my fist. The needle wobbled, swung, then steadied. "Where will you send it?" he asked. I pointed past the last gate, up the lane to where the geese had come from, and when I let it fly over the frosted hedge I watched the feathers hold their line all the way to the wall.